Tropical Storm Issac Update

Sweat Equity

Even Tony is getting in on some dusting, cleaning and sprucing up action.

We've been busy...

As everyone knows, we are closed this week for aerification.  Believe it or not, I hate aerification as much as golfers do.  It is so disruptive, but so necessary that just like you guys, me and my staff just grit our teeth and get 'r done.  The good news is that mother nature must be happy with the course as she is blessing us with perfect weather, super hot and super dry!  It's one thing to make the mess, it's another to clean it up.  If Mother Nature gives you a bunch of rain during the "making the mess" part the cleaning up part becomes excruciating.

Since we have had such great weather, the processes of aerification week are moving very quickly.  In two days the crew has aerified 3/4 of the course and vertical mowed just over half.  Much like any big project, aerification week is a little slow to start as there are so many things that are timing dependant.  Also like other large projects, once the beast gets rolling you'd better stay on top of it so it doesn't get off course.  Needless to say, me and the assistants put a lot of miles on our carts running around checking on everything and everyone during this time.

I've also got some other really great stuff going on this week in the clubhouse.  Today I had electricians installing some recessed lighting around the cart barn to increase night time parking lot safety.  Instead of having the one little flood light on the side of the wall, now there are recessed lights in the soffit on the parking lot side, as well as the end facing the clubhouse.

I had all the old, faded hand railing painted around the clubhouse

I have a carpet and upholstery cleaner in to do all the chairs, wall dividers and flooring

I have a contractor in the kitchen working on some wall repair where there was some minor water damage.

I was even able to get a little paint touch up done in the golf shop. 



 

The whole team at CCN has been hard at work making improvements and repairs to get ready for the upcoming season.  A lot of it you'll never see, like how Chef Todd was able to increase his efficiency and storage capabilities by replacing the old shelving in the coolers, or how nice the cleaned up bad storage room and its newly painted floor looks, or the new outside lighting installed for the bag guys when they get here at 6 a.m. and are trying to load the day's bags onto cart in the dark.  There's lots going on all over the place, we've ALL been really busy and it's only Tuesday!



Extra, extra...read all about it

A few months ago I was contacted by a magazine called "Club and Resort Business" about the Club's clock installation on the driving range.  I just got my copy in the mail and wanted to share with everyone the wonderful story that was written about the Club in this national trade publication.

Here's the link   The Final (Time) Piece

Level Headed

Here is picture of 13 white tee after it has been stripped and material added to the area that had settled. The tee will be leveled, sodded and grown in so the teeing ground is ready for season.

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.