What brought about the change in how the course drains its excess water was a function of needed upgrades, finances, and common sense. Over the summer the electrical control panel that operates the pumping system had some components go bad. The cost to replace the bad components was going to be expensive. One reason for being expensive is some of the parts needed are not even made any more. That's how old the control panel is. I had three options to proceed 1) replace parts that are extremely hard to find inside a 40 year old panel, of which I'm not sure how much longer the other parts of the panel are going to last 2) replace the entire pump control panel with new technology 3) find a new way of draining the excess water. Option one, putting new parts inside the old panel, was just a band aide fix. It was also relatively expensive for an unknown payback period. Option two, a new panel, was really expensive, but the future reliability of the pump was known and servicing of the panel would be easy for the predictable future. I didn't really like either of these two fixes! The one major flaw with both of these options is that we still had to rely on a mechanical means of flood control, a pump. All is well and good as long as the pump doesn't go out, kind of like New Orleans. Yet, invariably during a major storm the electricity does get knocked out. Once the electricity is out, the pump shuts off, and the water backs up until someone comes out and starts the back up system. By the time someone comes out and starts the back up system there is massive flooding on the course. We did such a great job during the renovation of getting the water off of the course, into the lake system, and to the discharge point that I didn't want to rely on a mechanical means of flood control anymore.
To solve the problem I called the contractor who built the golf course and we came up with a plan to use gravity to move the water off the property for us. Instead of having to pump the water over the berm and off the property, we made a plan to install a new 24" pipe through the berm and let the water discharge on its own.
The plan was to lay the pipe invert (the bottom of the pipe) at our control elevation, or the point which we do not want water to rise any higher. In this picture the contractor is using a fixed laser elevation rod to determine the control point. Once control is determined, the contractor will know how deep to dig the trench for the new discharge pipe. After the trench is dug, the grade of the trench will be checked every foot to ensure the trench stays at the control depth. The guy on the left is setting the control elevation and the fixed laser is behind Erick on the right.
Here you can see the final part of the trench being dug. Notice the elevation rod on the right side of the picture. Every foot of the trench was check to make sure it was perfect.
Last piece of the pipe installed and the crew is back filling the trench
So now once the water level rises high enough to reach the bottom of the pipe which is set at the control elevation, this will be the new view as it leaves the property Just head for the light at the end of the tunnel, right!
And the proof is in the pudding. This little bit of water trickling out of the end of the new discharge pipe is the same amount of water still flowing into the discharge lake from the front side lakes. The system works perfectly! Now we no longer are relying on a mechanical means of flood control, gravity does the work for us. Better yet, since the Club does not need to buy electricity to run a pump anymore the pay back period for this improvement is only two years through the cost savings of cancelling the FPL service. I am still going to leave the diesel engine driven pump in place as an emergency backup, but I doubt we will every have to use it.
