Mapping Your Irrigation System
Set up your pump station, capture stations and sprinklers with GPS, draw your pipe network, and run your first hydraulics health check
The Irrigation section lets you build a digital map of your entire irrigation system — pumps, pipes, stations, and sprinkler heads — so TurfWise can tell you whether every head on the course is getting the pressure it needs.
What this page does
Open Irrigation from the side navigation and you'll find a row of tabs: Overview, Stations, Sprinklers, Field Repairs, Systems, Map, Hydraulics, Scheduling, Water Meters, Diagnostics, Maintenance, Pressure Tests, Documents, and Import.
This article walks you through the mapping side: setting up your system on the Systems tab, capturing GPS locations for stations and sprinklers, drawing your pipe network on the Map tab, and running your first health check on the Hydraulics tab.
The payoff is real. Once your system is mapped, TurfWise can simulate water moving through your actual pipes and flag weak spots before they show up as dry patches.
How long does this take?
The setup wizard takes about 10 minutes — have your pump nameplate handy and a rough idea of your mainline layout. Mapping every station, sprinkler, and pipe run is a bigger job. Most clubs do it gradually over a few weeks, capturing GPS positions while they're out on the course anyway.
Set up your system first
Everything starts on the Systems tab. If you haven't set anything up yet, you'll see a "Set up your irrigation system" card — click Get Started to launch the wizard. If you already have a system, the Add System button opens the same wizard.
Irrigation setup wizard
This article refers to a live TurfWise screen. Media is omitted here so the written steps stay current across releases.
Your pump station
Give your system a name (it defaults to "Main Course Irrigation") and tell TurfWise how many pumps are in the station. Two is typical for an 18-hole course; three is common where fairways are irrigated or watering windows are tight.
Your pumps
Optionally pick each pump's specs from the built-in catalogue, or skip and set them later. You can also enter the operating pressure — the gauge reading the pump actually runs at on your site, which is often lower than the rated figure.
Leave it blank if you're not sure
If you don't enter an operating pressure, TurfWise uses the pump's rated pressure for hydraulics. If you skip the catalogue too, sensible placeholder specs are used (22 m³/h, 7 bar, 11 kW) — you can correct them any time from the Systems tab.
Place your pump station on the map
Tap or drag the pin to mark where your pump station physically sits. This becomes the anchor point for all hydraulic calculations, and TurfWise automatically captures the ground elevation at that spot.
You can skip this step, but the health check won't run until a pump location exists. If you skip, the Map tab shows a "Place pump on map" banner so you can fix it later.
Mainline pipe details
Record your main pipe material (MDPE, PE100, uPVC, ductile iron — or "Don't know"), diameter, and approximate age. These answers are noted for your reference; the friction calculations use the material and diameter you set on each pipe segment when you draw the network on the Map tab.
Add your stations and sprinklers
Stations and sprinklers each have their own tab. On the Stations tab, click Add Station to record a control station — its station number, decoder address, course area, valve, and flow details. On the Sprinklers tab, click Add Sprinkler to record individual heads against their parent station.
If you've got an existing spreadsheet of stations and sprinklers, the Import tab can bring it all in at once with a column-mapping wizard — much faster than typing.
Capturing GPS positions in the field
Every station and sprinkler form has a Location section with three ways to set coordinates:
- Use my current location — stand next to the head or valve box with your phone and tap the button. TurfWise records the position and shows the GPS accuracy, for example "Accurate to ±4 m (GPS)".
- Pick on map — opens a map so you can drop the pin by eye.
- Manual entry — type latitude and longitude directly if you have surveyed coordinates.
Walk the course with your phone
The fastest way to map a course is to capture positions while you're already out there. Open a station, tap "Use my current location" while standing at it, save, and move on. The accuracy figure tells you how good the fix was — wait a few seconds in the open for a tighter reading.
Location section on the station form
This article refers to a live TurfWise screen. Media is omitted here so the written steps stay current across releases.
Draw your pipe network
The Map tab shows everything with a GPS position — stations (amber), sprinklers (green), repairs (orange), pipes (blue), and valve boxes — with checkboxes to show or hide each layer.
To draw pipes, click Draw Pipe. Pick the pipe material and diameter in the toolbar, then click along the map to trace the pipe run. Double-click to finish, check the length looks right, and click Save Segment.
Pipe drawing needs a desktop or laptop
The Draw Pipe button is hidden on phones — tracing pipe runs needs a mouse and a big screen. You can still capture station and sprinkler GPS positions from your phone in the field, and place or move the pump pin on a tablet. Save the pipe drawing for when you're back in the office.
How do I know where to click?
While you're drawing, TurfWise shows soft coloured rings around every valid connection point — the pump outlet, existing pipe junctions, station markers, and sprinklers. Every pipe must start or end at one of these (or directly on an existing pipe), so the whole network stays connected back to the pump.
If you draw a line floating in empty space, TurfWise rejects it and explains why. If only one end connects, you'll get a gentle warning — fine if it's a deliberate stub run, worth a redraw if you just missed your target.
A few nice things happen automatically as you draw:
- Stations and sprinklers get wired up. End a pipe on a station or sprinkler marker and TurfWise connects it to the network for you.
- You can tee off mid-pipe. Start a new line directly on an existing pipe and TurfWise splits it at that point — no need to delete and redraw the mainline.
- Elevation is captured. Each pipe junction gets its ground elevation stamped from terrain data, so the hydraulics know about your hills.
Keep an eye on the banners
The Map tab warns you about problems as they appear, rather than letting you discover them later:
- "No pump outlet set" — the health check can't run without a pump location. Click Place pump on map to fix it.
- "Nodes are missing elevation" — click Backfill elevations to fill them in from terrain data. Without this, hilly courses get treated as flat.
- Connectivity warnings — if a station or pipe section isn't connected back to the pump, you'll see it flagged here with tools to tidy up duplicates or remove orphaned nodes.
Run your first health check
Open the Hydraulics tab. If anything is missing, you'll see a checklist of the three prerequisites: pump station configured, pump details added, and pipe layout drawn. Each incomplete item links straight to where you fix it.
Once all three are ticked, click Run Health Check.
Hydraulics health check results
This article refers to a live TurfWise screen. Media is omitted here so the written steps stay current across releases.
What do the results mean?
The headline status is one of three colours:
- PASS (green) — every head gets the pressure it needs with room to spare.
- MARGINAL (amber) — it works, but some heads are within 1 bar of the minimum. A hot week or a partially closed valve could tip them under.
- FAIL (red) — at least one head falls below its required pressure.
Below that you'll see the worst-case head on the course, peak pump utilisation, and total demand against pump capacity.
The Pressure at Each Head chart shows a bar per station, coloured green, amber, or red. Where sprinkler ring data exists, a small white tick marks the pressure at the worst-positioned sprinkler on that station — the gap between the bar end and the tick is friction loss around the ring.
The Findings list turns the numbers into plain English — what's wrong, where, and a recommendation for what to do about it.
There's more once you're set up
The Hydraulics tab also includes a What-If simulator, a Scenario builder, pressure and C-Factor trends, and an Evidence Brief you can take to committee when you need to make the case for pipework investment.
Common problems and fixes
The health check says I need prerequisites I've already done
The check looks for at least one system with pumps and at least one drawn pipe segment. Adding stations and sprinklers alone isn't enough — you need to draw the pipes connecting them on the Map tab.
My pipe won't save — it says it must start or end at a connection point
Every pipe needs to anchor to the pump outlet, an existing pipe, a station, or a sprinkler. Zoom in and click directly inside one of the coloured snap rings. If nothing on the map has a ring yet, place the pump outlet first.
The results say nodes are "at sea level"
Some pipe junctions were saved without elevation data. Open the Map tab, click Backfill elevations, then rerun the health check.
I can't find the Draw Pipe button
You're probably on a phone — pipe drawing is desktop-only. It also only appears when the Pipes layer is switched on and at least one system exists on the Systems tab.
Where to find it
Open Irrigation in the side navigation — it has its own section, just below Course. The mapping work lives across the Systems, Stations, Sprinklers, Map, and Hydraulics tabs.
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