In a recent blog post I mentioned that we use 35 million gallons of water per year. 35 Million is an average of the last 3 years; during years with a lot of rain we use less, dry years more. This seems like a lot but let me work on qualifying that number and how the water is used.
We know that we use more water now based on the water usage reports that the club must report to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) every year. On average between 2004 and 2006 we pumped 10,908,578 gallons/year. In 2007 our numbers were off because there was no grass on the ground for 6 months but between 2008 and 2010 we have averaged 35,213,042 gallons/year. There are three main factors that affect the higher use of water and three maintenance issues that this causes.
Factors:
1. Our pumps are now larger and can pump more water. Even if we needed more water in the previous years, we couldn't pump it fast enough.
2. Our new turf requires more water than the old turf varieties.
3. We have more turfed areas and in turn more sprinkler heads.
Maintenance associated with pumping more water:
1. More heads, pipe, wire, satellite boxes, etc. to maintain and keep edged
2. More water being applied to golf course requires more drainage and more properly draining soils. The addition of drainage and the application of sand topdressing are two of the many things that we do to combat this.
3. Water levels in the quarry are much more likely to be depleted
The rest of this post deals with the basics of plant needs and irrigation. If you are trying to take a nap, it may be a great read but I think it is also very informative.
Basic Agronomy: Plants need water to survive. Some plants need more water than others. Water is lost due to drainage, transpiration and evaporation. The last two factors are key and together are known as the Evapotranspiration Rate. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a term used to describe the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the ground to the atmosphere. Transpiration accounts for the movement of water within a plant and the subsequent loss of water as vapor through stomata (small openings that allow for oxygen and water exchange between the plant and the atmosphere) in its leaves.
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| These heads on #11 are an example of head to head coverage. |
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| Our Weather Station |
Quick Irrigation Facts
-We have to report our Monthly Water Usage totals to DEQ
-Our Pumps are shut down between November 15 and March 15 so we really only pump water for 8 months out of the year
-The outdoor tennis courts and the clubhouse grounds are both irrigated off of our system
- We do all of our heavy watering at night because we don't want to inconvenience play and we lose less to evaporation at night.
-We mainly hand water greens and rarely use overhead irrigation on them. This is the most efficient, site specific use of water and cuts down on over watering. We use hand held moisture meters (pictured) to measure the amount of volumetric water content percentage (VMC%) in the green and then use hand watering to adjust these numbers as we see fit. This will be a good topic for a later blog post.
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| Two 3 inch probes measure the VWC% |
-The quarry to the right of #11 is our only source of water. We do not pump from the ponds on the golf course.
-We can control every sprinkler head on the golf course with our hand held radio
-Quick math; 800 heads x 50 gallons/minute = 40,000 gallons/minute x 20 minutes = 800,000 gallons of water applied on a night when conditions have been very dry. The math is not this simple because a lot of the heads have adjusted run times due to localized wet areas or because they are part circles heads.
-A central computer communicates with 19 individual Satellites or Controllers in the field (one per hole + the range.) These satellites then send a signal through a wire to each individual head. This signal turns a solenoid on which turns the head on.
