Over the
years #2 green here at Great Waters has always been healthy and fine. It still
is but this year a small problem reared its head. We had an unusual rainfall
event a few months ago where 4" of rain fell in about 7 hours one day.
After the rain we had, for the lack of a better word, a small bubble come up on
the front of #2 green. This bubble was approximately 12"x18". We knew
that we had a problem because greens should be able to take much more rain/hour
than this, but a 4" storm in one day is quite uncommon for us. That bubble pretty much healed itself in 1
day by mowing and rolling over it. We knew that we would have to revisit this
problem sooner or later but we did not realize that sooner would come so
quickly. Late September and early October brought many cloudy and rainy days to
our area. It was around 10” of rain in a 2 ½ week period and once again we got
almost 4” in one day. The front of #2 green looked like we had installed a new
water hazard and a large bubble was present.
Here is
what it looked like after the rain stopped.
This
issue was moved to the top of the list and we began putting a plan together to
solve this problem. Here is what a
typical USGA spec green drainage diagram looks like, and this is what we have
under our greens here at Great Waters. Coincidentally #2 green looks almost
identical to this image.
We
started by going to the flush point at the high end of the green and sticking a
hose in there. The thought was to try and flush out whatever type of blockage
that we had in the drain line. The high pressure from our irrigation system
will usually clear blocked lines with ease. However, after only about 5 minutes
of running the hose, water started rising out of the green. We knew at that
point that we would not be able to blow this line clear. The outfall or lower
end of this drain goes into the pond just short right of the green. So now the
focus turned to finding that end of the pipe. We knew that the drain had to be
draining at least a little so we poured some pond dye into the flush point at
the high end of the green. This would help us locate the pipe in the pond. It
took quite a long time for any dye to come up in the pond but eventually it did
and we got in the pond to dig for the pipe.
Four guys and Three hours later we had
not found any pipe. The next day we lowered the water level in the pond by
about 2 feet and tried again. After about three more hours with the same four
guys we finally found the pipe 4 feet deep in the mud/muck. It was completely
full of junk and it was going straight down into the ground. We knew this was
the right pipe because just a tiny trickle of dye was still coming out.
At this point we have found the pipe,
we know it is clogged up, and we know that it is coming into the pond much too
deep. After much debate about continuing to dig in the pond and find where the
pipe turns up to go back towards the green, we decided it would be much easier
to dig a few feet in front of the green, find the pipe, cut it, and run a whole
new line to the pond. Had we just cleaned out the end of the pipe and left it
that deep in the pond it would have become covered over in the next rainstorm
that we got. Below are a series of pictures of us installing a new line. The drain was much deeper in front of the
green than we had anticipated but since it is such a steep slope to the pond we
still had plenty of fall for the new drain line.
These are the pictures from the new
line installation.
As you can see by the water in the trench, there was still plenty of water backed up in the lines and when we cut it to put the new pipe on it all drained out.
After the new line was in and all of the sod back in place we had to fix the green where the bubble had come up. When turf rises like it did the sand underneath gets shifted around and you can get high and low spots. We really did not end up with any high spots just a good many low spots. We could have stripped the sod from this area, smoothed the sand, and then laid the sod back down, but with us having Bermuda grass greens and it already being October we knew this would not heal before winter got here. We also though about taking a cup cutter and/or a 6" plugger and spot treating each depression, but we knew that many holes cut in one area most likely would not heal either. So we decided to try an approach that some might call creative, while others might say crazy. I personally am in the creative group. We knew that water had made the turf rise and create this bubble in the first place, so we thought what if we stick an air hose into the ground and let the air push the turf up. All we had to do was figure out a way to get sand to go into the depressions while air was pushing up the turf and trying to push sand out of any holes that we were trying to put sand into. With a little trial and error we found that sticking the air hose beside each depression and making a few holes with a screw driver and a large hole in the middle of the depression that we could get sand to go into the hole and level out under the turf. It was a fine line between not enough holes to let the sand go into and too many making the green into swiss cheese and not pushing the turf up. We spent a couple of hours on the green with the air compressor, a screwdriver, and some VERY dry greens mix and I think that it turned out pretty good. There are still a few small depressions that we will have to topdress out but nothing like it was and you can hardly tell that we even put any holes in the ground.
Here
is a short video showing the air hose in action.
Finally
we rolled the area with a Salsco roller.
This
is what the area looked like earlier this week.
