Irrigation Controllers

Over the last couple of weeks we have begun installing irrigation controllers on the golf course.  We were able to buy the controllers used from Hallbrook Country Club at a fraction of the cost of new controllers.  These controllers will be a huge upgrade from our existing ones. 

If you have played golf over the last half of the season, you may have noticed us pouring concrete for the new pads.  We completed all of the pads by the end of September.  You can see in the following picture the new controller pad next to our old pads. 

   
In the last couple of weeks we began installing our new controllers onto the pads.  It is a slow, tedious process that involves a lot of wire.  Each station must be spliced and a new wire ran into the controller.  A station has one wire that controls either one or two sprinkler heads depending on their location.  Each controller has between 20-32 stations.  Once completed, we will have installed 18 controllers.  The recent snow storm has slowed our progress.  To date, we have completed 7 installs.



Wires coming out of the new pad before the controller is installed.

All the station wires spiced for the new box.

All the station wires hooked into the new controller.

Completed controller with splice box shown in the foreground.

Irrigation Blow Out

The time finally came when we could blow out our irrigation system.  Usually we are able to do this around Thanksgiving, but the warm and dry weather has forced us to hold off until now.  We completed the blow out on Wednesday, December 19.  

The process involves hooking a large air compressor into our irrigation lines through the use of a quick coupler.  We then turn each irrigation head on through the satellite controllers to blow any water in the lines out to prevent them from freezing.  It takes us all day to completely blow the water out of the system.  Now we don't have to worry about any irrigation leaks until we charge the system back up in early March.

 

I also snapped this picture this morning of our putting green and first hole.  The first snow fall of the year came on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.  It looks like there won't be any golf at least for today!

 



 



 

Irrigation Repair

Last week we found an irrigation leak by #9 tee.  Unfortunately, the leak turned out to be under the cart path.  This meant we needed to rent a concrete saw to remove part of the asphalt to be able to dig up the leak. 

Nick cutting out a section of cart path.

After removing the section of cart path, we were able to get down to the leak.  The culprit was a 6" T fitting that was servicing one head.  A 6" line meant a lot of water needed to be drained off. 

We removed enough material on either side of the T to cut out the old pipe and replace with new pipe and fittings.  6" fittings can get pretty expensive to replace and are no fun to deal with.  We spent the entire day cleaning out around the pipe, and removing the existing fittings and replacing with new.

6" line servicing one sprinkler head on a 1.5" line

 
We were able to get the water turned back on around 4:30 p.m.  It was a long day of repairs, but I would much rather be dealing with it in April then July!  After we replaced all of the dirt, we filled the rest of the hole with gravel so carts could return to the path.  This week we will replace the asphalt we removed with a patch.

Hole filled with gravel