Off Color Fairways

#1 Fairway discoloration

Some of you may have wondered why the fairways are looking off colored. This is the time of year when the zoysia grass is producing it's seed. So what is creating this color change is actually the black seeds and the white colored seed stalks. After a few mowing to get rid of them all we will be back to green fairways.

#1 Drain Basin

Chase's handiwork

Drainage trench

24" drain inlet

While fixing the bridges here, we needed to identify the problem of where was all the water coming from to create our erosion problem. On the west side of #1 bridge we recognized that all the water from the fairway and rough drained straight down the cart path to the bridge. Well this was a major problem because of the large amount of runoff that comes after wet weather. The idea is to install a large basin to collect all that water and send it down a 12" drain. So first Matt Chase shaped the basin in with a Bobcat and then I came in with the mini-x to dig the trench. Once we put the pipe in we back filled the trench and redid the cart path. We still have a couple of loose ends to tie-up because we were racing the weather so any rain runoff would get to the newly fixed bridge abutment.

Cart Path Drains #13

Digging the trench

Finished drains

There has been a long standing issue with water collecting on the cart path behind #13 green. I thought while I have all this equipment here on site for the bridge project I would take this opportunity to install a couple of drains. I took the mini-x out there, which is a long slow ride from the shop, to dig a trench through the woods so that we could install drain pipe. We had to cut a small section of concrete out so that we could put a drain on the other side of the path. After getting all the pipe installed we just had to back fill the trench and we were done. We hope that this alleviates the standing water.

#11 Drainage Issue

#11 Spring by cart path before

#11 after

Now dry cart path #11

For the past few years there has been a natural spring that has popped up along the west side of the cart path. This spring has created a problem with the water running down the path and making it slippery. We went in with a skid steer and created a drainage channel through the native grass. This channel will catch everything from the spring and keep it away from the cart path. We had instant gratification with this project because right when we were finished the water had already begun to follow the channel and the cart path has dried up.

#1 Bridge Repair

Exposed abuttment.

Loren down in the hole.

Top side finished.

Underneath before.

Underneath after.

This past Monday we began to repair years of errosion damage around some of our bridge abbutments. In all we have five bridge sides to repair and we started with the west side of number one. This was quite the process. We first needed to remove the cart path leading up to the bridge so we could add errosion control matting and back filling the void that was left from errosion. After we filled it in we then put gravel and screenings to make a temporary cart path which we plan to come back in the fall and pour concrete. The last step was to fill in the void that was left under the bridges with dirt and then added errosion control matting with rock that we recycled from our cart path repair project. We now have four sides left and we hope to have them all done by next week.