Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Note – This write up has a lot of talk of “adjustments” and “settings”, these are all very simple to do but hard to explain with just text so see the video at the end of the post, for further explanation of all of it.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Orbit’s Tripod Impact Sprinkler. I actually found this in Lowe’s, bought one to try it, and loved it. Dorothy ordered me to “buy another one,” so before going back to the hell that is a box store, I checked Amazon, and not only did they have it, but it is also a few bucks less to boot.

First, this type of sprinkler, an “impact sprinkler” aka a “whirly bird” sprinkler, is likely the most flexible sprinkler on the market. I go way back with these things.

I often mention of my two grandfathers, one was a gardener, and the other was a lawn guy. The “lawn guy” was my mother’s father.

He was the grandfather that taught me about fishing in Florida and lawn care in the same location. I am not big on lawns, but man, my grandfather was. He was all in on St. Augustine Grass and “whirly bird” sprinklers. So I learned all about adjusting them from him.

You can make these things run in “standard mode,” slow impact followed by fast impact and repeat, and cover about 280 degrees. That area can cover about 70-90 feet out, depending on your water pressure and volume. Additionally, you can set it to run on “fast impact mode” only, and it will cover 360 degrees with less throw.

The reason for that is when it is on the slow impact speed, it is shooting very far, and a lot of the area closer to the sprinkler is not getting any water. When the sprinkler switches to fast impact, it throws a shorter throw and drops water right up to the base of the sprinkler and about 60% of the distance out. When you do this, you get great coverage of the entire area with control of the area itself from about 10-270 degrees,

So what about 360 degrees? Well, there is a small clip that you simply move up, and when you do that, the head will simply spin 360 degrees in one direction non-stop. Since that clip won’t hit the side controls when up, it will simply continue to rotate in one direction. When set this way, it will constantly run on the fast impact, meaning it will shoot less distance but give you heavy coverage from the base of the sprinkler all the way out to the max throw. Again, this throw will be about 60% of the slow impact throw.

So all of this so far is true of all impact sprinklers. So what makes the Orbit Tripod Impact Sprinkler so great? Well, first is the tripod, which is so valuable, especially when you want to do more than water a lawn. By elevating it, you can set it to really do a great job getting water into tree’d areas and bushes and shrubs. Also, to get water up and dropping down on raised beds, etc.

Additionally, when you have ducks or geese or dogs and have a sprinkler on the ground, those critters tend to mess with things. In the end, the tripod can be set very low or very high and just gives you a lot of flexibility in your setup. Now let’s talk about brass here for a second. These sprinklers come in two metal options primarily, and those are zinc or brass. Brass is an alloy that includes zinc, with the other primary metal being copper.

Brass is much more resistant to corrosion than zinc. In fact, you can get this sprinkler made with zinc and save a few bucks, but you will likely lose a few years of life expectancy. I watched one video of a guy who has used one of these all summer long for 4 years, and his still worked perfectly. I would never expect to see a 100% zinc cast sprinkler survive 4 years of heavy use. So in this case, spend the extra 7 bucks. I won’t even link to the zinc option, but you can see the price as an option on the page where you can find the one I recommend.

Okay two more quick things before we wrap up this one.  First while this item does cost almost 50 bucks it will last a long time and if it is take care of the only real part that will fail in time is that brass impact sprinkler head.  First thing I did when I found this was ask, can that head be replaced without a machine shop making some weird adapter or something?  Can you just buy the exact part and replace it for a lot less then the cost of the entire thing?  The answer is yes.  You can get a replacement head for about 17 bucks and just replace it if it goes bad eventually. I will add you likely could use these heads with stand up pipes, etc. for a permanent irrigation system as well and have all the adjustability that I show in the video below.

And one last thing, uneven or rocky ground.  First all the stand up impact sprinklers I have found tend to use a step in stake and that just isn’t going to work for me here and many other have rocky ground like I do.  With the tripod you just set it up and roll.  Lastly as each leg of the tripod is individually adjustable you can set it level on sloped ground or set the pitch high on one side low on the other for certain situations.  Basically these are the single most versatile sprinklers available.  They are not the perfect solution to everything but they are a solution to almost everything.  See the PS below the video for some recommendations for irrigating small areas and spots where you want direct irrigation like an isolated area, etc.

So if you want to up your irrigation game with maximum flexibility, check out Orbit’s Tripod Impact Sprinkler today and consider pairing it up with simple mechanical timers so you don’t forget to shut it off because you know you may very well do so, God knows I have.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

For Information on Adjustments and More See the Video Below

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P.S. – As I said impact sprinklers are the most flexible and adaptable option we have but if you want to irrigate a very small area they don’t really excel.  In that instance here are two models that work really well depending on the application.

• ColorStorm 9-Pattern Premium Turret Sprinkle – Very flexible, easy to run a few without losing to much pressure, great for close watering under trees and shrubs, etc.
• Plastic Ring Sprinklers – There are super cheap and handy, no moving parts, tons of people make them, very box store has them, they are all the same so buy what works for you or what you can find.  The link is to a 6 pack because they are 4 bucks a piece that way but you can buy the one off, etc.