Happenings on #13

When the golf course was originally built in 1964 a pump was used to drain the excess water from the property.  The pump was driven primarily by an electrical motor system the was turned on by a float switch in the lake between 11 tees and 13 tees.  The pump also has a back up diesel engine for when the electricity is out, but the diesel has to be turned on manually.  There is no automatic start system for the backup.  This same system was still in operation up until yesterday.  Yesterday, the Club made a great improvement on how the course gets rid of excess water.

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.

Blog posting correction

Some of you may have read a recent posting about soil water I posted on accident before it was completed and wondered what happened to the rest of it.  I downloaded a new Ipad application and was playing around with it and hit "post" before it was completed.  I finished the posting and would like to invite you to check it out.  It has some great information on why wet spots happen. 

Here is the link to that section
Soil Water - More than you ever wanted to know!

October 3, Season is almost here

Normally I write about what I've been doing on the course, but this time I thought I would share with you some of the other wonderful things that have been happening around the Club. Probably the biggest thing everyone will notice is the wonderful things Tony and his staff have been doing with the Golf Operations department. Most noticeably is the refinements when you walk into the golf shop. Here is the new view of what you'll see.
....an absolutely beautiful piece of mahogany for the new counter top.


Tony has also made some merchandising changes. Its sort of a reorganization of what used to be there, but with a little better flow throughout the shop I think.


Here is the new golf club space


In other parts of the clubhouse a lot of needed maintenance has taken place as well. All of the tables and the bar inside the Tavern have been refinished to give a very classy and distinguished feel.


And the inside hallways of the clubhouse have been repainted


So as you can see, all around the Club this summer we have been busy preparing for our busy winter season. The course is in great shape, the clubhouse and golf shop look beautiful, and now all we are missing is our wonderful members! Hope to see you soon.

Getting ready to head to Naples? Watch this fiirst

I just recieved my weekly email from the USGA Green Section which is the agronomic side of the USGA. In the weekly email the USGA talks about current issues, challenges, and industry updates that are important for everyone to know about. In this week's update is a very good slide show and explaination about the drought gripping the midwest section of the country and how it is affecting golf!  You can check out the presentation by clicking this link >>> http://webcast.usga.org/usga/Drought_2011.pdf

Although we are not as severely affected by the drought, south Florida is still under water restrictions. Our water availability is gauged by the height of Lake Okachoobee which is still two feet lower than the historic average for this time of the year. One of the major reason for this is that we have not had a major tropical system hit Florida in almost three years. This water shortage in Lake "O" is going to cause the water restriction to stay intact and I am expecting in the Spring for the restrictions to worsen to phase II (30% reduction) or possibly phase III (45% reduction). I'm not trying to scare anyone, but this is what I'm seeing in the long term if we do not get a tropical storm to hit Florida's coast this season.

In fact, I received this email from South Florida Water Management...

Despite the recent rainfall, Lake Okeechobee remains far below normal August rainfall provided a steady soaking of the South Florida Water Management District’s (SFWMD) 16-county region, but much more rainfall is needed in anticipation of transitioning into the dry season next month. August rainfall was 3/4 of an inch above average, providing an average of 8.51 inches of rain throughout South Florida.


“The daily rainfall we experienced through much of August was ideal to recharge groundwater and surface water levels,” said Susan Sylvester, SFWMD Chief of the Water Control Operations Bureau. “However, we are entering the home stretch of the wet season, and we’re hopeful that this type of rainfall continues before the dry season sets in.”
From the Upper Kissimmee’s 8.59 inches in August to 9.33 inches in Big Cypress Preserve, rainfall helped to fill canals, lakes, rivers and groundwater. The rainfall was particularly beneficial on the east coast, where drought conditions were substantially alleviated. For the month, eastern Palm Beach County saw 9.84 inches of rain, 1.78 inches above normal, while eastern Broward County received 9.71 inches of rain, 2.28 inches above normal.


However, Lake Okeechobee remains far below normal for this time of year. As the back-up water supply for South Florida, the lake remains below 11 feet NGVD and is more than three feet below normal for this time of year.


In late August, Hurricane Irene remained offshore and drew moisture away from Florida, resulting in lowered rainfall totals, but the overall continuous rainfall throughout the month allowed the SFWMD to store as much rainwater as possible in preparation for the upcoming dry season.
Meteorologists are predicting a drier-than-normal dry season. In South Florida, the daily afternoon thunderstorms typically begin to taper off by mid-October. In the Kissimmee region north of Lake Okeechobee, rainfall totals typically decline even sooner, by the beginning of October.


IF THE REMAINDER OF THE WET SEASON DOES NOT PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT RAINFALL, SUCH AS A WELL-PLACED TROPICAL SYSTEM, THE WATER SHORTAGE IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE THROUGH THE SPRING. WATER SHORTAGE ORDERS REMAIN IN PLACE DUE TO LOW LAKE LEVELS AND THE PENDING DRY SEASON.

More than you ever wanted to know about water movemnet in soil

I want to apologize about the recent "update" on this blog posting that seemed to be incomplete.  It was!  What happened was I was working on this posting behind the scenes, but didn't publish it.  Then one of my friends told me about a new Ipad app that would allow me to work on the blog via my Ipad "on the fly" so to speak.  So I downloaded it and tried it last night...it didn't turn out so well.  I hit the wrong button, what I was working on got posted, and when I tried to fix it the app froze up.  Below is the finalized version of what I was working on.  Sorry for the confusion, but here we go....Soil Hydraulics, fasten your seat belt!

It has been often said amongst turf professionals that if you want a good golf course it takes three things...drainage, drainage, drainage.  If you think about the game of golf the concept is very true.  Good drainage promotes a firmer surface, better growing media for the grass and all of that translates into a happier golfer.  Nobody has ever been turned away from a tee time because the Superintendent has said "Sorry, the course is closed because we just drain too fast and the playing conditions are too firm."

We have all seen drains and we all know their purpose, water goes in the drain and is piped to the lakes.  What is usually unknown is what happens to water in the soil and why do wet spots occur.  In my last posting I explained what we were doing about wet spots and showed you how I was fixing the problem by installing some physical improvements.  This time I want to try and explain why we needed to do what was done.

The most important concept to remember in dealing with water movement through soil is that water does not like layers.  When water being pulled downward by gravity hits a layer, it stops!   Look at the picture to the left and you can see an illustration of what I am talking about.  In the top picture you can see an inverted bottle of water resting on the top of the soil.  If you look at the curved lines and follow them to the left you will see numbers representing time in minutes.  Now notice after 50 minutes the water is not moving any farther down.  The reason is that the water in the soil has hit a horizontal layer.  Notice in the top picture that the water seems to be "boxed in" on the sides.  This is due to vertical layers on each side. Another important rule in soil hydraulics is that water will not move through a layer until the entire uniform soil profile is filled up.  This is why the water filled the entire soil profile within the "box" surrounded by the layers before it moved laterally again.

In the bottom picture, if you  look at the numbers on the left (sorry for such a small picture, it was the only one I could find) and correlate them to the top you can conclude that it took 50 minutes for the water to move straight down from the initial infiltration point, but due to the different layers in the soil it took almost 200 minutes for the water to fill the "box" and move through the vertical layers and begin moving downward again. 

Now that you have the basic concepts of how water is going to move through the soil, imagine the tortured path water has to traverse in the soil on the golf course where the soil profile looks like a bucket of vanilla / chocolate swirled ice cream.  This layer issue is one reason why wet spots form and why after a rain I restrict golf carts for a while.  Even though the surface water has made it's way into the drain basins, the soil water needs time to drain before carts drive over the soggy soil.

A natural question would be "Why is it an issue now when it wasn't right after the course opened?"  Initially when the golf course was built the soil was loose and soil water moved much quicker.  In construction terms, it had fluff in it.  Now that the golf course is a couple years old the soils are tightening up and soil structure is changing a little bit.  Don't worry, adding spot drainage is something that is very normal and needs to be addressed annually as the course matures.  Next year we will do more drainage, the year after that too, and so on.  Remember, to have a great golf course your have to have three very important things...

Summer Projects Update

As many of you know, my staff has been hard at work on hole 14 for the past two weeks.  A few people have asked what we are doing so I thought it would be a good idea to explain in detail what has, and is going on. 

Those that are around in the summer, or even during the occasional rain during season, know that 14 fairway gets to be very soggy in the tee shot landing zones.  Conversely, the roughs on hole 14 begin to burn up very quickly if they are not watered almost daily.  To deal with the different watering demands meant that I had to quit using the sprinklers that watered the fairways and the roughs and use a lot of man power to hand water. The hand watering allowed just the roughs to be watered while withholding water from the fairways to try and dry them down.  The process of hand watering a golf course when you are already very tight on available man power during normal times really puts a damper on what can be done.

To solve the problem I used a very simple solution that is used on another very important part of the golf course, the greens.  Around the greens there are eight sprinkler heads, four that water the green and four that water the green slopes.  A common golf maintenance slang term is "4 in's and 4 out's."  This way, I can control exactly how much water is applied to the putting surfaces by just turning on the in's and I can water the slopes by turning on the out's.  This type of "in and out" set-up is what I did on 14 fairway. 

Originally 14 fairway had two rows of heads, one on each side of the fairway, that rotated 360 degrees.  This watered the fairways and the roughs, but you could segregate the two. If the roughs needed water, the fairways that didn't need water got watered anyway.


To separate the ability to water the roughs from the fairway I had the crew take one had and split it into two. One will be dedicated to watering the fairways that need very little water (the "in" head) and the other will be dedicated to watering the roughs that need more water (the "out" head). Essentially, two heads rotating 180 degrees.  Now, with increased control on how much water is applied, the playability can be controlled better.


Part of splitting the single heads into two separate heads meant that we also needed to install additional control wires and that is what the trenches were dug for. We hit lots and lots of rocks but were able to get the trenches cut in.



Each head has a power wire that runs back to the controller. The controller has a wireless receiver that picks up a signal from the central computer in my office.  The central computer controls which sprinklers come on and for how long. The new heads will be added to a very specific irrigation program that can be manipulated to apply very precise amounts of water to a very specific place without watering where it doesn't need it.  When it comes to water application for golf, its all about control!  By the way, this type of dual head fairway irrigation control is what Atlanta Athletic Club installed on the Highland course to prep for the PGA Tour event.


Despite all the new added water application control that has been added, there is still a remaining problem. What about when Mother Nature decides she is going to irrigate the course for days on end even though we do not need it? We have to be able to remove the unwanted excess soil moisture. Erick and Casey started the process of installing subsurface drainage in the wet spots on hole 14 so when Mother Nature gives us all of her wonderful rain that we so desperately need, we can still play golf.

The process is really quite simple; excavate a trench 18 inches deep, install a perforated 4 inch pipe, back fill with rock and sod over the rock. The problem is that it is a time consuming ordeal. Just the excavation part of the process with two machines digging usually takes 3-4 hours, and that's if we don't run into a problem.


This is a drainage problem! This rock was so big a large construction back-hoe almost couldn't pick it up.


Usually when we find one large rock to remove that means there are others close by and we actually removed three rocks close to the surface about the same size as the one above. Removing these rocks usually tears a lot of ground up. Don't worry, we will fix it. Promise!


As the drain lines are dug, if you watch the materials being removed you can tell where the issues are even if it is dry. In this picture look and see how white and sandy the soil profile is. All that sand means great water peculation downwards and a nice, firm surface.  This is also one reason why we sand the fairways heavily in the summer.


In this picture look at the completely different soil profile. It is much darker. The darker color isn't from soil organics, its from a different type of soil. These wet areas that were dug through have a clay type soil called marl.


Here is the Uniform Field Soil Classification System definition of Marl"Marl consists of fresh water sedimentary deposits of calcium carbonate,often with varying percentages of calcareous fine sand, silt, clay and shell fragments. These deposits are unconsolidated, so marl is usually lightweight. Marl is white or light-gray in color with consistency ranging from soft paste to spongy"

Here's another picture of the material in a wet spot


When the golf course was reconstructed, the contractor did his best to not use any marl. We have a few small pockets here and there but nothing excessive.

My staff is finishing the last drain on 14 today and then we are moving on to 13 fairway. There are 3-4 areas on the right side of the fairway we will be installing additional drainage into. No additional irrigation heads are planned for 13 at this time.  

I saw this unbelievable rainbow the other day and it just made me think what a wonderful place we live in.  More to come later.

Aerification week...why all the holes

Its that time of the summer again, time to punch all of the holes in the ground.  Trust me, I hate it as much as you do!  Yet, like many of the things we do regularly to stay in shape, like working out or eating that salad when you really want a double cheese burger with fries, all of the hole punching is a necessary evil to keep the course healthy.  The health benefits of the aerification include compaction relief, soil gas exchange, organic matter management and increased water infiltration just to name a few.

With all of this in mind, I wanted to quantify how our agronomic programs have done so far this year.  Fortunately, the two USGA regional agronomists were in the area to do some site visit to other clubs and agreed to swing by CCN for a quick "look under the hood."  While the USGA was here we discussed all facets of our summer agronomic programs; aerifications, sandings, verti-cutting and the frequency of each.

The USGA was pleased with our green's management since the renovation and the surface the programs are producing.  The aerification programs are yielding a good soil profile that should provide acceptable receptivity to the greens while allowing for all the physical properties that are required .  It was the USGA'S recommendation that we do not change our aerification programs for the greens. 

Next we talked about the fairway programs, specifically thatch management and sandings.  Like the greens, we want a little bit of soil organics, but not too much.  We maintain the ratio of soil to organics on the greens primarily by core aerifications, meaning we pull cores out of the ground and then clean them off.  Traditionally the process would be the same on the fairways except we wouldn't clean off the cores.  Instead of removing the cores we would let them dry, drag a steel mat across the material to separate the soil from the thatch and then blow off the thatch.  Since opening the course after the renovation I have not core aerified the fairways due to all of the rock that is in the ground.  Instead of pulling cores as we do on the greens, I have used a different tine that just pokes a hole in the ground.  The reasons for only poking holes and not pulling cores is to 1) find all of the rocks so we could remove them without pulling up rock onto the grass 2) allow the grass to develop a little mat layer.

Here is a picture of a new solid tine of 3/4" solid steel side by side with a well used tine. Notice how much steel is worn off from hitting all the rocks.


Here's a picture of a little gem hidden just under the grass layer


And here is what these little gems do to the machines. We break lots of parts on the fairway aerifier, that's why I got an extended warranty on it!


After inspecting the soil profiles on several holes and talking about our fairway management programs that include aggressive vertical mowing and grooming, the USGA was satisfied that we are on track to have a high quality playing surface in the fairways doing what we are doing.  Additionally, because we have been so aggressive with removing surface rocks from the course, next year we will switch to a traditional core aerification in the fairways to be even more aggressive with organic matter control.

Similar to when you say peanut butter you almost immediately think of jelly, when you say aerification you almost think of sand!  In today's golf maintenance world that even includes the fairways.  My concern with our fairway sanding program was that we were either not doing enough and should abandon it or it was a program that really was just a feel good measure and was ineffectual.  I was wrong on both accounts!  The two USGA agronomists agreed that when it comes to sanding fairways the more the better, especially on the back where all the rock is.  I was told that it is not uncommon that after 5-7 years of heavy sanding in the summer it is possible to build up a good four to five inch layer of a high quality sand based profile. This is our goal, especially on the back 9 holes. We want to build a sand cap over all of the rocky soil. That's going to take time, but we have initiated the process and do repeated sands to the fairways. All of the sand will help maintain the fairways firm surface as well. This translates into better drainage and better roll off of the tee.


Another part of this week's activities was to go around to all of the bunkers and repair any of the settling of the sod faces that created unfair shots. In other words, we raised any areas around the bunkers faces where little depressions have formed that made an attempted swing at the ball unfair. We repaired the majority of the sod face depressions by cutting the sod and filling underneath to raise where needed. Then after the sod was put back the areas where heavily top dressed by hand to ensure a smooth transition line across of the face. In a few weeks the sod will heal and the sand will disappear and all that will be left is a perfect bunker face.


One of the important concepts that the USGA reminded me of is to not get crazy aggressive with late summer maintenance practices. Due to the high heat index during this part of the year the turf will be slow to recover. With this in mind I wanted to make sure we didn't cut of our nose to spite our face so to speak, so we did what we had to do without jeopardizing our long term health. The course made it through the aerification very well and should heal up very nicely. Our only blemish will be some areas that are not sodded where there were some extremely large subsurface boulders removed. We do not have enough on-site area to cut sod from to replace what was torn up, so I will order it on Monday for Tuesday delivery. All of these areas will be marked with a white circle and players can take relief without penalty under the "Ground Under Repair" ruling. Additionlly, any other areas that are not 100% will be sodded so that we can have full turf coverage going into the fall season.