A Superintendent's trick

I'm going to share with you on of the oldest tricks in a Superintendent's bag...how to temporarily stop dribbling water in a pipe so a repair coupling can be glued in place. When a PVC pipe is repaired, mot of the time a process of solvent/welding is used. It's a two step process, the first step is to use a solvent to clean both sides of the repair parts that are going to welded together. The solvent, or cleaner as its often called, starts to melt the PVC pipe making it soft.  The last step is to use a molecular binding agent (or glue as it is often called) to fill the space between the two pieces and fuse both pieces of the softened PVC together. This is similar to the way a metal welder fuses two pieces of metal together by first melting the metal and then adding a little bit extra to fill the gap.  Only, with PVC it is done with a chemical and not heat.

The issue with repairing pipe that has water running in it is that if the water gets mixed into the chemical process, the "welding" of the two pieces is severely weakened. So to stop the little bit of dribbling water that may be still in the pipes after the pipe is drained you might need to head to Publix. What you are going to need is a good 'ol loaf of bread. Bread is perfect for this because you can wad it up into a ball and stuff it into the pipe to temporarily stop the water. Once the repair is made and the water is turned back on, the bread will become soft and mushy inside the pipe. The bread will become so soft that it will blow right out of the sprinkler head when turned on.

Now granted that my sprinkler heads on the course have a much larger nozzle than a home situation, but the old bread trick will work in a home application just the same. You might need to take the small yard sprinkler's internal components out so they don't get plugged up, but the bread will blow out of the line just the same.

Some of Chef Todd's bread, I used Rye but any will do.

Clubhouse Green

Yesterday I posted that the Clubhouse putting surface was planted but the descriptive "green" wasn't appropriate. Here's a closer picture of what's on the putting surface. In amongst all the brown is a hint of green. As the new grass takes root and grows, the green will replace the brown. Again, this is a VERY normal thing. Don't worry, it'll work.

The battle continues

It has been said that if you want a good golf course you have to have 3 things...drainage, drainage and drainage. To prove that point during the renovation of the course in 2009 we installed over 450 drain basins throughout the course. Even with all that drainage capability, small pockets of wet soil still pop up from time to time as the course matures. The course is constantly evolving and part of my summer maintenance programs are to rectify any adverse conditions that age brings to the course.

In the picture below is an example of fixing a wet spot that wasn't a problem last year, but is now. This drainage project is taking place on 13 fairway in the second landing zone area. This summer my staff has already installed new subsurface drainage on 10, 18, we are doing 13 today and we will do another on 5 tomorrow.

Found a couple of hidden gems too

Clubhouse Green Update

The green, well really the "putting surface" has been planted. Green really doesn't describe it very well right now as you can see in the picture. The putting surface was planted one week ago and got mowed the first time today.  Although you can't see it, there's a lot of green on the green.  The recipe now is lots of water, lots of sunshine and a little bit of food....before you know it, you have a putting surface.  I still need to do a lot of work around the perimeter of the green within the celebration to make the tie-in's seamless.  Due to time constraints and not wanting to push the planting date back another week, I went ahead and planted the putting surface prior to finishing the surround tie-in's.  The reason being is that every week I can save on the front end, I save two weeks of on the back end.  Simply put, the sooner the planting date, the sooner the opening date.  Besides, the tie-in's can be done anytime before the green is opened.  I should take a couple of days to do the tie-in's and they will be done long before the putting surface is opened.

Solona Road Landscape Project Update

There's an old joke that starts out, "How many people does it take to..." and although I'm not sure its appropriate here, sometimes I think it is.  In the picture below are all of the parties who are involved in landscaping the eastern median island on Solona Road sitting together in my shop; two from the County, one from the City and the contractor who is going to do the work (there's actually a guy from the County absent).  Almost 3.5 yrs ago the initiative was started to get the median landscaped!  Now, hopefully we will get the final permit this week to make this dream a reality. 

John Wolski, a resident within the Big Cypress community and the HOA President, has to be given a lot of credit for tirelessly working on, what in any other circumstance, would of been a simple project.  In fact, the project became such a albatross that the County dubbed it the "Project to No Where" due to the immense intermingled nature of the County and City having to work together to get the project done.  Now I'm told by County staffers, the project is being used as an example on how to get things done.

Regardless of all the inter-governmental hoop-la,  for us the project is almost here.  The contractor told me today that once he has all of the permits and the City does it's part, the whole project will take approximately one week.  That means there's still a chance to get this thing done this summer.

Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Gordon River drainage project

The river project is still underway and has been severely slowed down by the almost daily deluge of rain in which it is intended to help with.  Seems even Mother Nature has a sense of humor on some things.  The excavation / widen phase of the project north of the RP bridge is complete.  What is left in the areas next to CCN is to grade the slopes and install the rip / rap bank stabilization.  The rock install phase is up to the area adjacent to 15 green on our side and as you can see in the picture the contractor is working on the RP side.

Here is a look from the RP side looking north by our #15 green.  The area above the rock is to be sodded with Bahia grass (the road side stuff).

The area south of the RP bridge still has to be excavated to remove all of the accumulation of silt over time.  It's been slow going, but this drainage project should help tremendously in the long run.

2nd Assualt, The 100 day war

The second closure of the course went very well.  The entire course was aerified and verti-cut without incident.  Erick has devised a great system of doing the needed agronomics in blocks so that he doesn't get caught by the afternoon rains.  Oh, and it rained everyday...a lot!

I'm extremely happy to report that our rock removal program that has been going on the past two years has been an extreme success.  Most times when we run the fairway aerifier up and down the course, all day long for a week straight, we typically break thousands of dollars worth of parts (all of which are covered by an extended warranty so don't worry) when the aerifier tries to aerify rock.  During this aerification of the fairways we didn't break the machine one time.  In fact, we only had one rock that we could get out by hand.  In years past, we've found rocks so large that even a large construction back-hoe couldn't lift them. 

Everyone knows that July starts our new fiscal, so that means we also start our project season.  Right now we are working on converting the irrigation on 10 tees to smaller sprinklers to be able to control the water better.  Everyone knows how wet it gets between ten tees and 13 green.  Part of the problem was that the large turf sprinkler along the hedge on 10 tees were shooting the majority of the water over the tees, onto the slopes of 13 green.  Now, when the irrigation on 10 tees is turned on only ten tees will get wet.  To help the wet spot at the base of 13 green slope and the cart path we will install some subsurface drainage in that area as well.  Other stuff happening includes trimming landscaping along the perimeter of the property.  Our annual ficus hedge trim is coming up.  This process is important is keep the ficus in hedge form with thick foliage from the ground up.

Sorry I don't have a bunch of amazing photos or videos to show you this time.  Nothing really exciting happened.  We punched holes, cleaned it up, got the course open back up.  I don't know if I'm glad things went so well or disappointed I don't have anything cool to show you.

Maybe next time.

Repairs to Clubhouse

Some behind the scenes stuff happening around the clubhouse that you'll appreciate while you're away..........


I had a stucco company out to repair the stucco on the soffits above the golf shop and pool rest room entrances.  When the buildings were built some 20+ years ago a metal corner bead was used to hold the stucco.  What happened was that water had gotten behind the stucco and rusted out the metal corner bead and the was causing the stucco to fall off.  The process was to rip off the old stucco and metal corner bead, install plastic corner bead, replace the stucco and paint.

The demo.  There's nothing subtle about this part, it's rip'n and tearing.

Here's the finished product.  If you look at the picture above, then look at this picture you might think "I can't even see what was done!" and that's the point.  The work that was performed was done so well, unless you were here to see it you'd never know.  If you look close in the picture above the two worker's heads you can see the last little bit of unpainted area on the side of the clubhouse.  I even had the workers repaint the entire affected area so there is absolutely no indication any work was done.

By the way, the pool cabana soffit was repaired in the same fashion.  You'd be hard to tell work was done.

Clubhouse Green Renovation Update

The work on repairing the clubhouse green is nearing completion.  Here is the progress in the project thus far.

Step one was to strip off all of the existing grass.  A sod cutter was used to cut the grass into strips.  The strips were then cut into smaller section that were rolled up and loaded into carts for disposal.

Once all of the grass was stripped off a grid was laid out on the surface (the red dots) to tell the staff where to dig the holes down to the gravel drainage layer.  This "pot holing" process is the only way to be able to check the soil profile to see where the sand depth is out of the 12-14 inch parameter of a USGA green.  The stakes are then marked at 12, 14 & 16 inches from the point and buried in the holes with the points resting on the gravel layer.  Once the grid of stakes are buried in the soil profile, it is easy to determine what action needs to be done to the surface.  If you can't see the lines you have to remove sand, if you can see all three of the lines you need to add sand.

In this picture you can see that the sand is almost up to the top 16 inch line.  This means in this area that approximately 2 inches is to be removed to get it to within the 12-14 inch parameter.

In this picture you can see where there is almost 20 inches of sand.  This is one of the reasons why the area was always drying out, way too much sand.  This is the area in the middle of the green where the large hump was.

In this picture you can see that there is barely 12 inches of sand.  This was taken on lower drop off area by the pool.
 

Here's the solution, start moving sand with shovels and rakes.  Not a lot of fun, but highly effective.



 The end result is that all the stakes show a consistent soil depth of 12-14 inches...perfect for greens.

Once all of the soil depths have been corrected and are now within the 12-14 inch parameter, the surface was tilled and fumigated to sterilize the sand before planting.   

The fumigation of the clubhouse green occurred yesterday, Monday - July 16th.  The fumigation plastic tarp needs to remain in place for 24 hours before being removed.  Once the plastic tarp is removed the soil is allowed to air out for 24 hours before planting can occur.  It just so happens that I have MiniVerde sprigs being shipped here tomorrow, Wednesday - July 18th to replant the clubhouse green with.  Once planted, it will take 10-12 weeks before the green is playable.

Stay tuned for more updates on the clubhouse green as it grows in.