In Agronomy 101, the first rule of growing good turfgrass is drainage. Your green section staff, taking advantage of dry weather, set to the task of retrofitting catch basins to an existing drainage network this week on the Seventeenth hole. As you know, the smallest of rain events can make this fairway unplayable for days.
We used high pressure water and a sewer clean out tool to make sure drains were running free and clear. Copper wire was attached to the clean out tool and feed down the tile with the water hose to help us trace the tiles path. When we found an obstruction, the tile lines were dug up, inspected and repaired as needed.
Most of our troubles were found where drainage tubing intersected irrigation piping. Repairs such as these should have been made by the irrigation contractor back in 1994 when the system was installed. As you can see above some where missed.
Three catch basins were added to the existing drainage network and will serve us well in the future as the network is expanded into adjacent poorly drained soils. We know of several "weeps" that need to addressed.
The water has already filled the bottom of the trench. Our trench cut through a small saturated zone of sand.
PLEASE NOTE: OUR WORK WILL NOT SOLVE ALL DRAINAGE ISSUES FOUND ON 17! While our additions will not address all drainage needs, it will go a long way in drying up a troubled fairway and rough. Multiple drainage laterals need to be added. Future work needs to be funded. $1,000 is a start, but it does not go very far these days.
PS: In a perfect world, this fairway should be capped with four to six feet of soil elevating the fairway surface above the "gumbo clays" that are so slow to drain.
PSS: It's 7/24/14 with temperatures in the 90's the past few days. As if we needed a reminder of how cold our winter was, a large ice chunk found in the pea gravel used to surround the tubing. These are just a few fragments of ice as proof. _Mk
