Irrigation and Tree Work Continues
Our Irrigation contractor continues to move quickly completing the back 9 mainline and starting on the front 9. They will have the mainline completed sometime this week. There are two sections of mainline that are not able to be completed right now due to the construction, and those will be completed when the earth moving finishes in July.
Once they finish with the mainline, they will begin to pull the smaller lateral lines along fairways, and around greens and tees starting on the back 9. They will then begin to hook up the new heads and disconnect our current system on a hole-by-hole basis and energize the new one. This means for the majority of the year we will be running two different irrigation systems until construction is complete in the fall.
The picture above is one of our Smart Hub Satellites. There is one located by 15 tee and another one located by the bathrooms on the front 9. There will only be two of these Smart Hubs on the entire golf course. They communicate via radio signals from our central controller located in our maintenance building. There are wires that run out of these smart hubs, that will connect with each sprinkler head. This will give us control of each individual head. With this new technology we will eliminate the gray controllers that are located on each hole.
Last week we were able to complete the temporarily tie into the pump house and began to feed water into the new system. As the contractor finishes up a section, they will flush out any debris out of the lines. This prevents the debris from entering the sprinkler heads and causing issues with them. The ditches by the pump house will be filled in, then in the fall when we are ready to terminate our existing system completely, they will re-excavate that area to remove our existing mainline pipe and tie into our new pumps and completely finish the irrigation portion of the project.
First water being pushed through the new system to flush out all debris.
Our tree work has almost come to an end. The image above is the view from what will be the new #8 tees, leading to the new #8 green. The new #8 will be located on our existing driving range and will be one of the first new holes completed. We removed all the trees on the driving range to make room for the new hole 8 and new hole 9. The image below will be the view from the new #9 tee. This hole will play back up the hill toward the clubhouse, with the green being in the area of the existing ladies’ tee on #1.
Along with all of the tree removal for the project our tree contractor was also able to trim some of the limbs on the left side of 3 that were over hanging the fairway. Below is the before and after picture. Now if you are in the bunker on the left side of the fairway, you have a clear shot to the green.
As our irrigation contractors begin to pull lateral lines in fairways and around greens, we will have to close holes or move tee makers into the fairways to ensure the safety of the guys working. Please look out for hole closed signs, in the next few weeks. We will do our best to make this process as painless as possible.