Our irrigation project has begun.
Pipe began to arrive to the clubhouse parking lot on Wednesday Dec. 12. This pipe is what will be used for our mainline. The mainline will loop around the entire golf course, beginning at the pump house on #12 with 10in pipe. From there the pipe will transition to 8in then down to 6in as it loops its way from the back 9 to the front 9. Winterberry Irrigation our contractor will begin to dig in the mainline on the back 9 first, working their way to the front later in the winter.
Each stick of pipe is 40 feet long, the contractor is currently fusing five sticks of pipe together to make 200ft sections. These sections will be transported out to the course and fused together in the field to make one continuous section.
Above is the first step to fuse pipe, a support machine levels the two sticks perfectly, then the silver plate in the middle, which has razor blades on each side, will trim both sticks of pipe at the same time, while they are compressed. This ensures that each stick of pipe fits perfectly together.
After the pipe is trimmed a heat clamp is placed around the pipe. The heat clamp heats the pipe, and the pipe is compressed forming a weld between the two sticks of pipe. The temperature and time that each joint gets is a determination of how cold the air temperature is, and what the temperature of the pipe is. Below is what the finish product looks like after all of the excess is trimmed off. This type of fusion eliminates the need to glue any pieces of pipe together, and according to the manufacturer the joints are stronger than the pipe itself. On our current system the glue fittings that were installed in 1998 were one of the main sources of leaks, and with this process the leak points are all but eliminated.
If you have been out to play in the last few weeks, you have seen flags everywhere on the back 9. The white flags show where the mainline will be located, the blue flags are where isolation valves will be located, and red flags are where electrical lines are located. The yellow flags across 11 fairways show where the main gas line into the clubhouse runs. We attempt to mark everything ahead of time to avoid any unnecessary issues.