Hi All,
I thought I would give you an update on what’s been happening and talk a-bit about our new irrigation system.
The last two weeks has seen the trees pop back into life and the course starting to get its summer look.
What has been on our radar so to speak is the lack of rain on our radar. The course has dried out dramatically since the 10th April and is actually causing a concern. As I write this blog we have only had 18mm of rain in April. This makes it one of the driest Aprils since records began… Yes, another record broken. It seems this is something we seem to saying month after month, year after year. One thing for certain things ARE changing and have changed a lot from when I started in this industry many moons ago. This is also backed up by real data. Data not only collected by professional meteorologists but keen amateurs and digital weather stations all coming back with the same data.
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| Live data from Soil Scout on 14th |
The seasons are no longer ‘traditional’ and planning for this is harder than ever, we are now at the stage of having to live in the present and use a two-week forecast to edge our bets rather than knowing the seasons. It’s worth noting that the in the last 15 years we have recorded 10 of the hottest years on record!
When did records begin, I hear you thinking… 1880 (142 years of weather data).
Back to April this year and with the lack of rain forecast and consistently high (for April) evaporation (E.T.). If you add the total rainfall and subtract the total E.T, we have a deficit of 50+mm this month. Not ideal going into the summer. Mother Nature will balance herself out at some point but when is the question.
Luckily, we have the new irrigation system which is still in the testing phase not the install phase.
It is FULLY working but we are ironing out teething problems. Now we electric and are using the most modern pumps, we have had issues with heads not shutting down correctly or clips not installed correctly on install. Arc’s may have moved under the new high-pressure system. There is lots of work going on finding these small teething problems and fixing.
These minor fixes being carried out mainly by Mark Blake our irrigation tech, Davy our support engineer from Abbott’s (who by the way was an irrigation tech at Royal Dornoch before).
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| Camera shy Davy repairing blockage |
We knew
we would get these issues. Every new install in the world gets issues. Some
worse than others but ours so far (touch wood) have been very little and I am
so impressed with how the install went. A huge thanks must go to Mark Peat, Jamie Docherty and Jim Price from Abbotts for all the hard work.
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| Mole Ploughing 4th Fairway |
Mole ploughing in over 9km of cable and pipework through clay and stone plus installing around 800 irrigation sprinklers, isolation points, cable joints, hose points and decoders on each sprinkler is a huge task especially when some of the pipe work being 180mm.
This has meant our delivery of water can be done in such a short time now.
Before to apply 3mm of water to the greens overnight would have taken us from 10pm until 5.15am. Now it takes 40mins!
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| 17th Surrounds being watered |
Our new sprinklers are mainly infinity sprinklers by Toro. These are the 35’s and 55’s. Infinities are the latest technology, giving us control on arch’s, nozzle flow, trajectory, additional tails if required and having all components under one lid. Reduce the need to dig up the heads so often as most repairs can be done from above ground. These are on greens, aprons, surrounds and fairways. The spacing on the fairway heads are 25 meters meaning we reduced the number of sprinkler heads we needed as the throw was so big.
On tees, walkways and other areas we have a mix of T5’s and T7’s depending on the size of the tees or walkways. These T7 and T5 sprinklers are smaller Toro heads that allow us to use low flow nozzles for shorter distances, perfect for tees and walkways. Our long term plan for walkways is to establish grass pathways in areas that are 'in play' like the 17th tee area behind the 16th green. We plan to use a harder wearing grass species, fully drain and level these area. This should help winter use and allow tight mowing in the summer.
Yardage plates will be added to fairway sprinklers in the coming weeks but like a lot of things at the moment deliveries are slow and we are waiting for delivery.
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| Watering Program above |
On Monday 25th April we tried our first full program. This meant we watered, greens, tees, aprons, surrounds, bunkers, fairways, walkways around 745 heads used with only the range/short game area and new turf nursery not used.
We applied 2-3mm in different areas depending on requirements and it took less than four hours.
That is incredible!
It means we can water later in the night and minimise the impact to golfers playing late in the evenings and to save energy costs.
Agronomically this is better as the greens don’t sit wet all night or with moisture on them which will help reduce the threat of disease outbreaks, this in turn will encourage the roots to search for water at the end of a long day with them finally getting respite in the early hours and it will mainly reduce ET lost early on in the evenings too.
We now apply water by the mm rather than run times. This means watering to the second and not minute. So if 2mm is applied in 3 minutes and 33 seconds it will apply it in that time and not four minutes like the old system.
If the new system is so good, why are you hand watering?
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| Moisture Probe |
We will always need to have the option to hand water greens and various spots around the course.We have installed QCV (Quick Coupler Valves) and Compression fitting hose points on every green. One at the front and one at the back. We have also added to boxes on tees and on fairway bunkers to help us manage these areas too.
Let’s remember the course is made up of many different soil types, micro climates these all effect E.T.
Each area is affected by these: -
1/ Light intensity
2/ Temperature
3/Atmospheric vapor pressure
4/ Humidity
5/ Wind
6/ Water absorption rate
7/ Soil moisture tension
How many times do you hit ball and know that wind is up there above the trees or you’re coming to a part of the course which feels cooler or hotter. So many variables. Especially with how our greens have been built. Modern courses are built from the same materials from bottom to the top. Courses our age were built with what they had and what they could scrape together from the surrounding area and Stoneham is totally different area to area. The 1st is on gravel/clay for example. The 11th pure clay, the 7th on stone and the 8th on peat.
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| 1st Fairway Installation: Note the stones in the subsoil |
Greens Sprinklers
If you imagine a square set out and, in each corner, you have an irrigation sprinkler.
Then you place a circular shape in the middle of that square, this is the green.
Each sprinkler reaches head-to-head. This means the curtain (the shape of the water spray) of water touches the other curtain of water. Spacing on greens are around 19m apart (depending on the green size). As these rotate and throw into the middle of the green there is a deliberate overlap of the sprinklers. This is because we have to allow for wind. A 19m throw could go down to around 14m while another of the four will be wind behind and could throw 25m and that’s if you use all of the sprinklers. This means you can over water the middles but not the edges.
Each year as we drive towards better performing greens getting the moist levels consistent across the surfaces is so important.
This is also why we have been installing drainage on the greens to have the same impact in the winters and to reduce the variables and give us more consistent surfaces.
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| Illustration of Green Irrigation |
We then top up the edges by hose rather than throwing more than we need onto the whole green. We use a moisture probe to check for these areas before and after we apply water and we now use the Soil Scouts to check daily changes and how the greens performance changes throughout the day.
This along with all the weather station data helps us to plan our irrigation programs.
This new system is ‘valve in head’ which means we can control zones or areas so we could only water the hot spots of fairways or one area or two areas of greens that maybe particularly dry.
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| New Pumps capable of delivering 90 cube an hour (90,000 litres) |
Using the system
It can now be controlled via an app on our phones or from the computer in the Greenstaff office and more importantly for me than anyone I can edit and change the system from home. This saves those late night drives up to the club to turn the system off if it rains. I won’t miss them 😊
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| The new Pumphouse and Tank |
Issues
Our biggest problem until we secure another water source is the flow rates into the tank. We now have two supplies filling the tank but because of our location over the motorways this has meant all applications to increase our pipe size and flow has been met with serious hurdles.
We have fitted static pressure valves to help maintain pressure in the clubhouse and buildings but also maximising our flow into the tanks. I would like to say this is sorted but this is something I feel we will be adjusting continuously until we have another water source added. We may also need to fit another of these on the other main supply from the 8th. This is because when the tank is filling the pressure at the drinking fountains is low and the only way to fix this will be to do what we have for the clubhouse.
Other things we do to help
On the course, the use of wetting agent technology is maximised to reduce the water requirements along with the moisture probes. Soil Scouts and weather stations.
The wetting agents in the summer are surfactants. These help breakdown the waxy film on the leaf of the grass plant and for moisture to distribute evenly throughout the surface and hold longer in the soil profiles (note in the winter this technology is changed to a penetrant technology which pushes the water through the surface and down the profile to help drainage.
There is another wetting agent technology we also use. This is Dew removal product which we utilise to help reduce moisture on the surfaces when disease pressure is high. This in turn takes away one of the elements needed for the fungus of the diseases to thrive and reduces the pressure.
The downside being these can’t be over applied as it can cause issues on the cell walls as it stops it from transpiration (which is the movement of water through the plant leaves).
The other thing we do to help with water issue is aeration. Our monthly aeration not only allows water down the profile but it encourages root development, this then develops and makes the grass plant more drought tolerant. We aren't doing this work to annoy you the golfer, we are doing this for many reasons but the above is very important.
Conclusion
Going forward during these dry spells we are so lucky to now have the new system. Having used Adrian Mortram probably the worlds leading irrigation designer on this project and MJ Abbotts to carryout the installation has given us a modern and professional Irrigation System.
This will enable us to develop the course further and grow the grass species we want, apply products when we need and not having to wait for Mother Nature. It will be the club’s future and will show we are serious about water management.
The Irrigation system is fantastic but as you can see there is a lot more to it and it not simply watering. For us it’s about finding that fine balance.
Don’t expect a perfectly green golf course all year round now as we simply don’t have an endless supply of water and with such a important commodity we must be prudent!
What you should expect is for us to slowly develop all areas on the course and an increase in grass coverage and a reduction in turf death like we had in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Keeping the plant alive will save so much time and money. The irrigation system gives us an insurance policy and tool to get us by the dry periods. It is simply a must for modern golf clubs and we now have it.
That’s enough on irrigation systems and water. I will blog again soon with some details of what the team have been doing over the last couple of weeks.
I hope this make sense and gives you a better understanding of the new system.
Enjoy your golf and watch out for the greenkeepers holding the watering app…
Regards
Matt
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