What was one way your course reduced its water usage and increased its efficiency?
People who work in my industry are very good stewards of the earth around them and constantly strive to protect and keep it ecologically sound (and much better than the way they found it). Turf management is a great help to the earth and so is drainage done the right way. Technology and research are always coming up with better ways to save water in the turfgrass business.
Over the years I have…
-Planted grass varieties that need less water to survive. (Click Here)
-Constructed Perched water tables on greens. (Click Here)
-Constructed tees that hold water better than native soil.
-Used wetting agents for better water dispersion and holding capacity. (Click Here)
-Reduced Water Bills For Lawns and Garden Sprinkler Systems (Click Here)
But the biggest way to reduce water usage and the hardest thing for me to get people to understand is the addition of many more irrigation sprinklers for better control of all areas ultimately using less water.
Initially the Elkridge Club golf course had approximately 350 irrigation heads with Toro 696 sprinklers down the center of every fairway. I called these ‘cannons’ as they could throw water from tree line to tree line on either side of all fairways. The problems come when you have different grass types in the rough verses the fairways requiring different amounts of water, and high and low terrain also requiring different amounts of water.
One line of irrigation down the fairways controlling approximately half the acreage or more of the golf course leads to overwatered and underwatered areas. This also causes more turf disease issues, algae, wet wilt, dry wilt, cart traffic issues, etc.
Once you convince those in charge that having more irrigation heads creates better control, it’s time to bring in a design expert. I will plug my go-to guy for many years, Paul McMahon from Hydro Designs (Click Here). Paul understood all these issues and ended up designing a system that brought the total irrigation sprinklers on the property to over 1500 in the 1990’s. With his expertise in placement and understanding, we had the best control with “part circle” sprinklers” in a “five-row” fairway system. We also placed part circle sprinklers all around the greens, tees, buildings, roads, etc. This change gave us great control over the different grass types and different soil types, hills, valleys, etc.
I could discuss this in more detail and much longer, but I will stop here – You get the points. More irrigation heads save on many things, especially money, by using less water!
-Mark S. Merrick, CGCS Retired
Introducing ‘Merrick Mondays’, a segment where we hear from Mark Merrick, our resident brand Ambassador, Chief ‘Cool” Officer, and general source of wisdom and secrets of the universe, to spotlight a dose of interview-style content, weekly.