The snow had melted and with the strong drying winds the course was in reasonably good shape this morning considering what it was like last week. We managed to open 15 holes, the rest were covered in snow, however it is melting fast. The forecast is for more rain tonight and tomorrow so we continued with the drainage works on 17th. We only had a couple more trenches to dig, which was good as leading soil away from the site is becoming really problematic. To allow water to discharge quickly from the drainage trenches we have connected the drainage 'grid' to a nearby ditch which will help remove surface water very quickly following heavy rain.
We have installed around 400m of drainage in this area, we still have a lot of drainage that needs doing right of the 17th green and towards the 27th fairway, however until the ground conditions improve we can not get drainage equipment into this area.
Other areas of drainage that were done when the snow was down has been tided up today, root zone topped up and the turf relaid. Drainage that was done at the 13th green area was inspected this morning, after the heavy rain and snow melt this area would normally have been saturated, however the drainage has worked well
We inspected the main that we exposed and we have discovered part of the problem with the slow drain off of surface water in this area.
It is clear on the picture that there is a scum mark on the side of the trench where the water has risen up, nearly to the top of the hole which is 1.4m deep,this is due to the discharge of this main. It runs along way into the 14th ditch, which could be silted up and partially blocked with roots, or when installed it has a shallow fall which could be leading to the problem we face. There still is around 2 foot of water still over the main pipe, this could be backing water up in the rest of the drains. Our plan is to install another main pipe that leads to the 13th ditch, which is only 60 meters away, it will take time to install as the depth of the original main is around 1m-1.5m deep. We will use a 225mm twin walled drainage pipe, which is more than adequate to take the water away, this will allow immediate discharge of all drains leading into this main. We will start this project later in the week if the weather allows.
