There is no way around it; Michigan grass will die in the summer if it is not watered regularly. The summer gets hot and the rain sort of stops, or at least it doesn’t happen often enough to keep your grass happy. If your grass is green all summer you will probably be the envy of the neighborhood. People who have to drag hoses around covered with dirt and bugs are not having any fun, and they probably are not watering their grass.
The solution to dry grass is to install a lawn irrigation system. You can do this yourself, but the professionals will do it better every time. An irrigation company will draw a diagram of your yard and decide where to run the main irrigation lines and where to install the smaller lines for feeding water to the emitters. A professional company will measure your water pressure and your flow rate which is measured in Gallons Per Minute or GPM. This will help the irrigation company decide what kind of watering emitter to install and where.
There many types of emitters from the pop-ups that can rotate to the stationary emitters that will water a specified area only. All of the irrigation watering is done by a controller which is pre-set to turn the watering lines on and off at a specified time. The yard can be divided into zones and each zone can be set for watering a certain number of minutes. The controller can be set to water each zone a multiple number of times each day. One of the rotating sprinkler heads that is used in an irrigation system was patented by the Rainbird Corp. in 1933. Rainbird and Hunter both make a number of watering emitters and sprinkling heads, and companies specializing in Irrigation in Grand Rapids have them all available.
When the weather changes, or your neighbors get too envious, you can limit the amount of water used every day by adjusting the controller. It is really a very easy process. You can water flower beds and some people even water pots of flowers. When winter arrives as it always does in the west coast of Michigan, the controller can be turned off until spring.
