Last year at this time I was updating everyone on how wet things were after 21 days of rain in September. No such news this year, but unfortunately things have gone too far the other way. The current dry spell is the hottest topic in Fawn Lake.
We've been busy with Monday outings, back to back Club Championship weekends, a summer that won't end, and the aforementioned dry spell. At the moment, manpower is heavily allocated to irrigation related issues and hand watering. There is a long list of fall jobs that need to get done, but it's going to require a change in the forecast in order to justify getting started on some of them. With some luck, we hope to be able to aerate tees soon. Rough aeration and spot overseeding will have to wait on better conditions. We'll get through it like we always do, but it's going to take awhile.
In times like this, the shortcomings of any irrigation system are exposed. The distribution uniformity (DU) of an irrigation system is not very good compared to rain. A state of the art system has a DU of about 80%. An irrigation audit would likely find that our system is somewhere around 50-60% at best. This poor uniformity results in wet spots and dry spots. The more we have to rely on irrigation in the absence of rain, the more pronounced these wet and dry spots become. The only way to combat this issue is by using hoses and hand watering. That's exactly what we do on greens and tees, but it's not practical to do that on the entire course. The irrigation system is a pretty good supplement to rain, but a lousy substitute.
With roughly 1000 heads, we are staying busy troubleshooting and making the most of this difficult situation. Adjusting sprinkler arcs, replacing valves, replacing nozzles, replacing solenoids, replacing drive assemblies, tracing wires, etc... is occupying a lot of our time. Alan, Richard, Ryan, and I have all been involved in making repairs daily for the past few weeks.
In addition to the problems exposed by the drought, we have had only half our pumping capacity for much of the past six weeks due to two separate issues. There are two pumps in the lake that serve our course and many of the 14 ponds on the course. These pumps sit side by side behind the clubhouse in the cove near 18 green. We had one motor come apart from the discharge pipe and shortly after repairing that problem, the other motor died. Below are some pictures and a video from our most recent incident.
Mike and Alan separating the old motor from the pump
Lowering the motor and float bag into the lake
Letting the air out of the bag to drop the motor into place
14 Ponds on the course rely on our irrigation pump for water. Moving water from the big lake to these ponds is not possible nor wise in times like this.
Soils are have gotten so dry in places that they are water repellent at this point
Ivy and Bean have been good company during some late evening work sessions
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