Lateral Break

We woke up this morning to a lateral break on hole #17 of all others. If you remember we had a 6 inch main line break a few weeks ago on #17. The break happened early this morning 3:38 am to be exact and we lost approximately 48,000 gallons of water, which is now a glacier. We will fix the break today and charge the lateral back up on Monday. Better now than in July I always say. We all cant wait until blow out in one week. Lets hope we have a favorable winter and we do not have to charge up our frost free system.

Winter Preparation

It is that time of the year again, winter time. So we need to prepare for the onset of cold and snow. Besides our snow mold applications, blow out of the irrigation system and bringing in amenities. We also put out the winter cups and snow fence. The winter cups are in place so we can rotating the pin location on the greens throughout the winter. We have to cut the cups now before the ground freezes or we will be stuck with only one pin over the winter. With these three pin positions we can distribute the play on the greens evenly. The snow fence will help us keep snow and moisture on select southern exposed areas as well as turf that is susceptible to winter kill from dry freezing winds. These winter preparations will help us get through a long cold Colorado winter.

Snow fence

Winter cups

New Valve

While we have #18 and #17 isolated we are adding a new 6 inch gate valve. With this valve we will be able to isolate the irrigation pipe that runs under Lake View Dr. and Fairway Lane. The new valve will prepare us if the old 6 inch line breaks under the roads. If this pipe fails under the roads we will not have to isolate any areas on the golf course, giving us much more control of our water. Then we can fix the break in a timely fashion, with out having to worry about getting water out to the course.

Old Main Line

Recently we discovered a main line leak east of #17 green. This leak was part of the old system and the only part of the old system left. This six inch main line is part of a 100 yard road crossing from #17 green to #18 tees. While the area is isolated we will also add a gate valve near #18 tees so if the pipe breaks again we can isolate the road crossing only and still have water to #18 and the chipping cove. One of the problems with this break is that it is surrounded by utilities like cable, power, water, phone and fiber optics. With all the utilities in the area the entire break has to be dug by hand and very carefully. We hope to have the new gate valve in first so we can work on the road crossing at our leisure. Lets hope the pipe does not break under the road in the future.

Bailing Hay

It is that time of the year again to mow down our native. This fall the native is especially thick due to all the moisture we received in the spring. One of the reasons we mow the native is to keep the weed population under control and to help spread the grass seed in the seed heads This helps the native out compete current weeds and weed seed from germinating. This mowing will also spread precious wildflower seed as those flowers seeded with the grasses. This is a long and dusty mowing process with over 200 acres to mow. We hope to have all the native mowed by Thanksgiving if the winter weather holds off.