Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Chasing the seasonal wet spot
When I first arrived at SGCC in 2005, I remember a comment at a Green Committee meeting about the irrigation system. It was something to the effect, that the system should be pretty well dialed in since it has been in operation for three years. Now that it is 2010, I can honestly say that it still is not dialed in and never will be for a sustained period of time. Irrigation is a constant battle with adjustments being made on a daily basis and we only stop tweaking the times when we can turn the whole thing off. We are about 2 months away from that exciting transition when we'll finally record some consistent rain.
We are lucky to have single-head control with our Rain Bird irrigation system. That means that every one of our 2500+ irrigation sprinklers and valves can be set with a tailored percentage. This is an incredibly valuable feature that helps us manage variables on the course such as soil type, slopes, shade, elevation, and wind. The most difficult variable at our location is shade, by far. The shade pattern is constantly changing and so is the wet and dry spots below the trees. An east to west fairway will be much wetter on the south side if we watered the whole area equally. Of course we don’t, and slowly adjust times to keep moisture and firmness consistent from one side to the next.
The thought of saving last year's settings for each month and loading them as the temperatures and seasons change is always tempting, but I’ve never had it work. Every spring, summer, and fall is different from the previous and from the next. This summer was much cooler than last, so loading last year’s percentages would have produced a wet course. Also, we frequently renovate the system to improve efficiency. Full circle heads become part, some out-of-play areas are turned off, and new stations are added for landscaped locations. All of these changes to the system must be reflected in the central control and redoing them every time you load last year’s data seems counterproductive.
Many of the wet spots we have this time of the year are near cartpaths, especially near tees and green surrounds. These areas have a high percentage of sand in the profile and must be watered frequently. Some of that irrigation hits the cartpath or runs off slopes to accumulate in traffic-compacted areas. Cart tires are extremely attracted to these wet pockets so we try to rope them off, although very reluctantly. I hate rope, stakes, and signs that clutter a beautiful view, but sometimes they are necessary.
We continue to reduce wet spots on the course with a new nozzle design and will move on to some primary rough after completing fairways this season. We will get back to raising heads that are sitting a little low and trim some tree branches that interfere with proper coverage. We identified a few more low spots along the cartpaths and will install drains to catch the misplaced irrigation. We have the technology to catch it, so we just need to find the time to chase the wet spot.
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