Joining The 21st Century

It has taken me close to 2 years since I have been at GFCC, but I have finally put together an updated and accurate irrigation map!

The current system we have was installed in either 1985 or 1986.  The map that I was left with when I got here is a colored pencil drawing on a blank piece of paper and is dated 9/18/1985.  It wasn't even an accurate map, I believe it was the original layout they used to install the system from, but of course what ended up going in the ground turned out to be quite a bit different from what was put on paper.

I have spent countless hours here with a wire tracer and a metal detector looking for grown over/flooded and silted over irrigation valves.  It is imperative to have a location for each of these, as there are often times when a zone valve will stick on and not turn off electronically, and it must be closed manually.  For the first year I was here, I would go to turn off an irrigation valve that was stuck on and it would take me hours to actually find it and turn it off.  Having this updated map will allow everyone on the staff now to know exactly where all the components of the irrigation system are located so they can be found and accessed at a moments notice.

While this new map is a dramatic upgrade, it still isn't quite up to industry standards.  Any new irrigation as-builts completed in the last 10 years are now all shot with GPS points and laid out in a CAD file.  That wasn't exactly an option here, but at least now the map is overlayed onto an updated aerial image and is saved in an editable computer file for future updates.

The 1985 pencil drawing that I was left with when I got here.  I almost fell out of my chair when I first saw this antique!

The new map is overlayed onto an aerial image taken last summer.  I have all the points saved in an editable Photoshop file so that it can be easily updated as we add, move, or remove any components.