Our irrigation pumps received their major annual service earlier this week which might be just in time for the warm weather as we also had our first sighting of a carpet snake out soaking up some rays on the course as well!! Last nights summer like thunderstorm may also be a pointer to a change in the weather.
The existing pump station located adjacent to the mens 17th River tee was installed in November 2000 and has barely missed a beat since. The pump station is a Grundfos unit and is made up of 2 x 32kw pumps and 4 x 64 kw pumps. They are controlled by a "variable frequency drive" unit which allows the motors to only run at a level that supplies water flow at a pre determined pressure meaning less power usage and less water hammer in the pipelines. The pumps react to the flow demand and cut in and out depending on that demand. The two smaller pumps that do the bulk of the work maintaining pressure have just over 18,000 hours usage and the four larger pumps have around 5,000 hours each. The pumps are capable of producing 95 litres per second but I normally run them at about 70 litres a second. A normal irrigation cycle where all irrigated areas are covered in summer uses about 1.5 million litres of water and the flow meter on the pump station has recorded 1,521,867,098 litres of flow since installation!! Year to date 2011 the pumps have delvered a meagre 65 million litres of water to the courses.
When you take into account the amount of rainfall we receive on the courses there is a lot of water passing through the place and last nights thunderstorm added another 68 mm to the total. That brings our August 2011 total to 277mm which makes it the second wettest August behind 1908 with the bulk of the rain recorded in the past 11 days. The only other years when more than 200mm of rain was recorded were 1899, 1958 and 2007 with the August average being 68mm.
The West greens will get their first cut this afternoon while it is dry and player numbers are down. The River greens will get a light de-thatching tomorrow to help remove some dead plant material and a light sanding to fill in the pitch marks and level out the surface, now that they have started growing again.
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| Inside the pump shed |
When you take into account the amount of rainfall we receive on the courses there is a lot of water passing through the place and last nights thunderstorm added another 68 mm to the total. That brings our August 2011 total to 277mm which makes it the second wettest August behind 1908 with the bulk of the rain recorded in the past 11 days. The only other years when more than 200mm of rain was recorded were 1899, 1958 and 2007 with the August average being 68mm.
The West greens will get their first cut this afternoon while it is dry and player numbers are down. The River greens will get a light de-thatching tomorrow to help remove some dead plant material and a light sanding to fill in the pitch marks and level out the surface, now that they have started growing again.
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