As mentioned a couple of posts ago there is a lot of work planned on the courses in the coming weeks.  This week will see the continuation of the Palm tree removal program that has been running over the past few years.  Our aim is to eventually remove all the Palms from the courses to eliminate the expensive ongoing annual pruning costs of these unpopular plants.  With the Ladies event on the River course this week we will concentrate on the West course on Tuesday with the stumps being removed on Thursday.

Another 2 Yagi type antennas on the irrigation controllers are to be installed this week as well.  The prolific growth and thickening of the tree canopy  has got to the stage that it is interfering with the radio signal from the main computer.  The controllers located at the rear of 13 West green and at the front of 18 River tee will have the antennas installed.

Yagi antenna at 18 River green

Our main irrigation pump station has barely missed a beat since it was installed in 2000 which was a very nice change from the previous pump station that required me to be present at the start of every irrigation cycle to ensure that it would start.  But all good runs must come to an end and one of the 30 hp pumps requires replacing.  The system was designed by Gold Coast local David Hanby who has been involved in the pumping and distribution of water on golf courses around the world for more than 30 years.  As David is a local we are fortunate to be able to have him service the pumps as well which is of great benefit.  His expertise is highly sought after and he is the preferred irrigation designer for several major golf course architects.  The pumps have served very well and my flow meter that was installed with the irrigation control system in 2002 tells me that 1,691,315,789 litres of water have been pumped on to the courses!  Just out of interest the pump station consists of six Grundfos pumps - 2 x 20 hp and 4 x 30 hp and has a variable frequency drive which essentially operates the pumps according to demand so if 20 litres a second flow is required to meet demand only one pump might be used and then more pumps are cycled in to maintain a set pressure point as demand increases.  This has a very positive effect in reducing power consumption and delivers the water in a much "softer" manner to our piping system which in some cases must be over 40 years old.  The pump station has a maximum flow of 95 litres per second.

New pump ready for installation.