It has been a while.....

It has been a while since my last post and the golf course has gone through some definite changes. I have been posting a weekly construction update for my members at the following address if any of you did not notice on the right hand side of this blog.

http://www.restorationupdate.com/

Only a few greens are left to be drained and have the gravel blanket and greensmix installed (13, 4, 2, 18, and the practice green).


Installing drainage on 1 green

We did begin the Basamid applications on our fairways, greens, and tee boxes last Friday with the first round going on 13 fairway, 14 green and fairway, and 15 green and fairway. We will continue on with more holes this week. The calibration process for the large Gandy spreader was tedious to say the least, with such a fine granular product it took two fairways to get our target rate of 420 pounds per acre achieved. From there it was 4 days of watering to ensure that none of the Basamid escaped from the profile.


Jeff Mold applying Basamid on 14 fairway


Closeup of Basamid after application


Watering in Basamid on 13 fairway


Irrigation installation has been moving right along all the way from main line installation to bunker sprinklers to programming our central and controllers. Both Duininck Construction and Leibold Irrigation have been easy to work with for us in the Maintenance Department and easy for each other to work with. We have also installed a new bottom pump on one of our deep wells to get us to our target gallonage and pressure, once the main line is complete we will do a flow test to see exactly what we have.


Main line installation between 2 green and 9 green


New Pump waiting to be installed.


The finishing and grassing part of the project is upon us now and it will be exciting to finally get to see some grass again after two months of dirt, dust, and mud when we have gotten all of our "timely rains". One interesting part of the timely rains has been with no irrigation for our roughs it has shown how little we needed to irrigate this summer.


15 green close to being finished


The next week will be action packed as the Basamid applications continue, grassing begins and the final parts of construction wrap up. Seeding did begin on Saturday with 13 fairway getting 1#/1000 ft2 of Dominant Xtreme 7 bentgrass and 1#/1000 ft2 of SR 5130 Fine Chewings Fescue and the first couple of greens (14 and 15) should get done during the early part of the week.


Seeding 13 fairway


Chris Brands and Tom Lehman will be on site as well to approve finishing work and guide the final rough shaping that is being done. It has been quite a run for Tom since he was last on site, playing every week since July 1st and it sounds like he will be playing all the way up until he plays in the Jeld Wen Tradition on the weekend of August 21st and 22nd, you don't hear of many players playing 8 weeks in row!!! Very impressive!!!