Sprinkler system: Things to watch out for?

We’ve got about 800 square feet of lawn in 3 rectangles, and I’m both getting tired of watering them, and hearing that, especially with the water issues we’re having here in California right now, that we should really be watering them at about 4AM. I’m not getting up that early for the lawn.

It seems as though we’re going to need a permit and inspection to plumb the anti-siphon valves, which is fine, and I’ll take drawings of everything we plan to do when we go to pull that permit, but I’m wondering if anyone else here has done this, and looking for whatever guidance I can get.

Specifically:

Anyone got a favorite sprinkler manufacturer or brand? Happy to pay a premium for lower maintenance issues.

In the back, we’ve got an 19×25 rectangle. I think I need six sprinklers to cover this, one on each corner set to 90 degrees and 19’ radius, and ones in the middle of the long side set to 13’ radius. Seems like there’ll be a little duplication with this, but I can’t figure out how to cover it otherwise.

Similarly, in the front we’ve got a 10×10 square, which I think needs 4 sprinklers, and a 10×20, which I think, again, needs 6?

For starters we were wanting to just do the lawns, but while I’ve got the trenches open I should run extra pipes just in case we decide to add drip or spot sprinklers for various flower beds. Anyone got a suggestion for how many of those I should run?

I’ve also seen a couple of suggestions that I should install a separate remotely operated master valve before the individual valves. We’ll be doing a valve bank on either side of the house, do the computers have enough whatever they need to deal with two master valves?

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/