Green Team class of 1999 proudly standing in front of the many sprinkler heads they
painstakingly installed over a three year span alongside their other golf course maintenance duties. Our golf course was the last private 18 hole in the state that watered fairways manually. Watering fairways at night was not only very inefficient, it was also very dangerous when vision was reduced and wet turf made utility vehicles hydroplane. The watering crew would average over 18 miles a night in golf carts during the height of the watering season. One of the greatest concerns of the superintendent and potential liability nightmare. The inefficient manual irrigation caused many problems of over watering and under-watering of the fairway turf areas. Over 150 manual valves had to be hand dug up and retrofitted with new pop up irrigation heads and water sealed decoder chips for the main computer to read. Miles of control (computer) wire had to be trenched into the ground and attached to each irrigation head along with proper ground rods for lightening protection. Because of budgetary considerations, all work was done in house. The efficiency of this new system can save over 100,000 gallons of water a night over the old manual system (millions of gallons each year), along with reduced maintenance of the irrigation and vehicles and reduction of labor. This efficiency has already saved our Club the entire cost of the project by 2003 and provided a more cost effective environmental management practice for the future.