The Big Melt

With 60 degree temps and high winds we are finally seeing a substantial amount of melt on the course today.  Wind can do in a few hours what takes a few days with warm temperature alone.

On a day like today, you can definitely identify where/how well water moves on the course, an easy way to find more drainage projects that are needed.  The rate and amount of melt on a given hole says a lot about it's level of exposure and can provide keys on what areas may require additional snow mold or mite protection, winter watering or even what areas we will see green up first.

It's also worth noting that the more snow we receive in an event, the greater the discrepancy between the first and last hole to melt off.  For instance, if we have a couple inches it may only take a few hours for the course to completely clear.  If we get 20", there can be a difference of many weeks between the first hole clearing and when the final snow drift melts off.  It all depends on exposure and soil temps.  The funny thing about our brief discussion today is that they are calling for additional snow tomorrow!  UGGH 

Blazing into the 21st Century

We recently purchased our first flat screen television for our break room....  I know, but our 10 year old JVC was very difficult to see and truly a 170lb safety hazard hanging from the ceiling.   Upon installing our new 46" beauty, we came to the conclusion that we could more efficiently deliver training/safety information via our new television once connected to a PC.

A quick trip to the world wide web yielded a simple hardwired solution from B&H that installed in about 15 minutes.  Now anything we can create, view, play on our computer can be viewed in the break room in beautiful HD.  It should prove to be especially handy for the irrigation design and auditing class we put on for Front Range Community College.  Big thanks to Lance for buying our new flat screen, he always takes care of his employees. 

Crummy picture, but you get the idea.  The converter scales and transmits our monitor signal so that it appears clearly and in the correct aspect ratio on the screen.  Handy little device when a wireless signal isn't available.

Good to know a welder

Last fall, after our first snow of the year, I noticed another pinhole leak in our pump station manifold.  As we have discussed off and on the last year, much of our infrastructure is approaching twenty years old and is definitely showing it's age.  This time the 2" line from our pressure maintenance pump was victim to rusting and possibly electrolysis.  At the most basic level, rust is the result of a reaction between iron and oxygen in water or at least the presence of water, while electrolysis is basically the transfer of current through free ions like sodium.  

The PM pump is a submersible (much like a sump pump in your basement) high pressure pump.  It does exactly what it sounds like, maintains our pressure set point saving wear and tear on our main pumps which are designed to run for extended periods, instead of short bursts.  Anytime we have to make repairs to our pump station, we inspect the condition of the steel pipes, as of late they are not in good condition.  There is a pretty significant amount of rust inside the pipes which is normal with mild steel, but in our case it is accelerated by the high sodium content of our water.  Thus, we are forced to make annual repairs to our pump station plumbing to repair leaks.

Today our leak consists of a pinhole leak in the bottom of a weld.  It is currently a tiny drip, but behind that pinhole leak is a 1-2" cavern in the inside wall of the pipe, and this is what makes fixing these leaks a little more challenging.  The other challenge in this case is actually getting to the area to make a repair...

We are sealed back up for now, hopefully we can make another season without needing more welding on our station.

Quite a storm

No, we aren't shoveling greens quite yet.  Just checking in on a few of our greens to check for snow mold and or an ice layer building up.  As you can see we still have a minimum of 8" of cover on our greens and at this point, we aren't terribly worried about snow mold.  We are still under the protection of our snow mold products (barely) and we had ample time to harden off prior to this storm.  Typically snow mold is far less likely when the turf plant has had the chance to fully harden off and the soil temps have dropped sufficiently prior to extended snow cover.  Certainly not a definitive rule though, there are always exceptions.  If we continue at this rate of melt, we shouldn't expect to open until the end of February/ beginning of March.... Yikes!

Another round of snow

Friday morning we were literally digging our way out of our shop following the latest round of snow here in Westminster.  We haven't had a snow event this big for a couple years.  The snow is supposed to taper off this afternoon, but we are looking at around 16" so far.  The snow came just in time, as many of our south facing slopes were in need of moisture, and pressuring up our system appeared to be eminent.  We were fortunate to finish our irrigation installation on our new tees before the snow started, so when the snow does melt, we can focus on pressuring up our system and tidying up our new tees.  I may be getting a little ahead of myself, as it may take an entire week, just to get our cart path opened up.  The better part of next week will likely be spent cleaning up from this latest snow storm.