Practice Area Upgrade

We've been working on the chipping green bunkers for the past week and hope to have them ready for action early next week.  The sand delivery trucks laid an egg on Thursday or we would have finished them already.  Essentially we removed the old sand which was contaminated with clay and pea gravel from the drain lines.  We then added new drainage, re-shaped the worn edges, and replaced the sand.  As is usually the case with a project, we ran into some complications.  The drain lines that come out of both bunkers as well as the exit line for the chipping green were all crushed beneath the cart path.  We cut the cart path, dug out the crushed lines, replaced the pipe, and put the path back.  Some day I'd love to re-vamp the short game area into something more user friendly, but for now we have fixed up what we have.

The chipping green bunkers were first on our bunker "hit list" for a number of reasons.  The lack of sand was the main issue and that contributed to a list of other issues....

• The pea gravel from the drain lines was exposed and could be found throughout the sand.  
• The red clay beneath the sand was contaminating the bunker sand
• Neither bunker drained effectively
• The bunker slopes between the green and bunker were in rough shape from all the sand deposited from practice
• The first part of the course you see as you travel towards the club is the practice facility.  We needed to improve the appearance.

More Pictures....

Sand replacement underway on the left side while drainage is repaired at cart path

Crushed drain outlets under the path had to be repaired

Looks better from way up high 

Sod replaced on the bunker slope.  We lowered the slope almost 18" by removing old sand
that had been blasted out of the bunker

Removing sand from the bunker slope

The slope is at least 2' higher than it should be.  It's amazing how much sand 

Mike and Rich removing the concrete to repair the drains

Repairing the drains within the bunker 

Removing the old bunker sand