River Pump, Round 2

As if round 1 of putting the river pump out wasn't bad enough, here we are barely 6 weeks later taking it out and doing it all over again.

The pump quit moving water last week, although the motor still worked and ran, nothing was coming out the other end at the irrigation pond.  We made the decision to pull it out Thursday to discover that the diffuser plate on the bottom of the pump had cracked and partially dislodged, allowing the motor to run and pump water, but not build enough pressure to get the water up the hill over 15 fairway to get down to the pond. 

We had a part overnighted from Minneapolis, and then had the distinct pleasure of spending most of the afternoon on Saturday, my 29th birthday, back down in the river after our nice morning rain shower.  I forgot how much I love crawling around under a steel cage down in the Red River...

New diffuser plate in the bottom of the pump

My view from underneath the pump float

Pump and assembly ready to go back in

Hookup complete and pump running.  This time we managed to get the entire
thing in and out without the use of an excavator.  I think Andy only got the
tractor stuck once...

Amazingly, we managed to get the thing back out of the river, fixed, and put back in again without any major injuries or mishaps.  This whole thing is a recipe for disaster.  The worst part is that I have very little confidence in that pump that it will make it though the rest of the summer without having to come back out again for more repairs.  Even worse, between Andy and I we put in a total of about 20 man hours during our hottest days of the spring down in the river working on the pump.  Those are 20 hours we lost working on the course that could have been put to much better use fertilizing, seeding, spraying, watering the greens, etc.

To make matters all the worse, the pump went down during what so far has been our hottest, driest span of the spring.  Our high temps last week were 75, 82, 85, 66, 77, 88, 89.  Our average high temp during this week of May was supposed to be about 67 or 68.  Not only that, but before our nice shower on Saturday morning, we had only received about .45" of rain since the beginning of May, and most of that fell in the first few days of the month.  Lastly, the humidity has been extremely low and the winds very blustery, usually from the south.  Daytime RH (relative humidity) during the week was usually about 20%-30%.  That is dry.  When we get into the heat of summer and start talking about having really humid days and heat indexes, daytime RH is usually 60%-80%.  Needless to say, we were pumping out some serious water during the week.

We almost had the irrigation pond completely full on Monday last week.  The river pump quit sometime on Sunday evening, and over the next 5 days we pumped close to 1.4 million gallons of water out of the pond to water the course with, which lowered the water level about 2 feet in just those 5 short days.  We were pumping out water last week, this third week of May, equal to what we would have been using in a hot and dry span in July or August.  I have a really bad gut feeling about how this summer is going to treat us weather wise....lets all keep our fingers crossed for some timely rains and moderate temperatures.  Unfortuntately, this spring so far has not been very indicative of that happeneing.

This is the panel display on our pumpstation on Friday morning, after it was
88 the day before and predicted to be 92 that day.  If you look closely, you
can see that we pumped 279,000 gallons of water just overnight.

I hope everyone gets the idea how much I despise this river pump and how pathetic and old fashioned this method of pumping water is.  It is totally unreliable and I just have a gut feeling that something is going to go wrong again at just the worst time of the summer.  Our fallback plan of putting gas pumps in the pond across from 14 fairway and running hoses across the fairway to the irrigation pond is equally ridiculous.  A more permanent solution for filling our pond needs to be addressed in the coming years. 

However, in the meantime Andy gets kudos for coming up with the idea of us building a dock out into the river to put the pump on.  Instead of a steel cage that we have to lift and push out everytime the pump needs serviced, if we had a dock we could simply walk out to the end, hook the pump onto it, and drop it in. 

That being said, if anyone has any parts from an old aluminum dock from their lake house that they don't need we might be able to find some use for it......

Going Back To Native

We are starting the process this spring of converting approximately 30 acres of what had previously been mowed rough area, back to natural unmowed areas. 

The total golf course property encompasses about 220 acres.  That area includes about 3 acres of greens, 2 acres of tees, 25 acres of fairways, and about 110 acres of mowed rough!  That is certainly a little lopsided.  While obviously some amount of rough is necessary, 110 acres is not.  I would wager that there are areas of this golf course property that were being mowed regularly, once to twice per week, that might see less than 5 golf balls a year.

For me, from a financial standpoint, every acre of rough that we don't mow is money back in our budget to put toward other course improvements.  Based on some rough numbers (pun intended)  I put together from the cost of fuel and labor, we could save about $50 annually per acre of rough we quit mowing.  By taking out 30 acres of rough, we just put $1,500 back in our budget this year alone. 

My goal is to eliminate some areas of rough on the course that rarely, if ever, will see a golf ball come their way.  These areas are mostly around and behind tee boxes and the beginnings of fairways, and some other areas that are far off the beaten path of the golf hole along the edge of the coulee.  Think left of 17 green, between 9 and 18 green, behind and right of 6 tees, etc.  Furthermore, these areas are un-irrigated and will always end up turning brown and crispy at some point in the summer anyway.  By allowing the grasses to grow taller, the grass will go back to a more native appearance (similar to the area between 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) which will let the grass seed its self out, and hopefully some seeds from the surrounding tallgrass prairie areas will blow in and start to establish as well.  Basically, as opposed to these areas being dry, dead brown areas come August, they will start to resemble the appearance of a native prairie, giving the course a more natural feel.

We have started outlining some of these areas already and begun to quit mowing them.  I understand that this is likely going to be an ever evolving process:  some areas we have outlined may turn out to have a few too many golf shots go their way and we'll mow them back a little, and we may also find that there are some more areas we can quit mowing that rarely ever see a golf ball.  I would ask that everyone be mindful of these areas and realize, that if you hit a REALLY bad shot (sorry to be brutally honest) that you may lose your ball in an area that used to be mowed.

As with any changes to the golf course, any questions or concerns that you as members have is certainly welcome and appreciated.  Please share any thoughts, insights, or concerns about these areas as you continue to play the golf course in the coming weeks. 

One of many rough areas that we quit mowing

Someone Stop The Wind!

I realize that the wind is pretty consistent in ND, but this last week has been pretty rough.  I honestly think the only calm period we had the entire week was on Wednesday morning.  Other than that, all day, all night, the wind has blown, pretty hard too.  We barely squeezed in some much needed fertilizer applications during the week, and also managed to get in the first spray application on the greens on that nice calm Wednesday morning.  There were two other spray apps I would have liked to have made this week, but the wind never gave us any more chances.

To couple with that, we got a skimpy .15" of rain on Monday evening, and totally missed any rain from the storms we were supposed to get last night.  Also, the 30 mph south winds with a high of 83 degrees on Thursday was a little extreme for early May.  We are already irrigating nightly amounts of water equivalent to what we would be using in August (about 200,000 gallons per night).  Some of the un-irrigated rough areas are already started to show drought stress.  We are starting to hit the peak time of the year where the temperatures are getting warm and there should be adequeate rainfall occuring to really get the turf in healthy shape and develop some really intense roots.  These warm temperatures are certainly a bonus, but without adequeate moisture in the soil it is still hard on the plant.  Lots of those rough areas were already dry from last fall, and now with what is turning into a dry spring they are going to have a hard time greening up and taking off.  We may end up saving a lot of money on diesel fuel from not having to mow as much rough this summer unless it starts raining soon...

Lastly, this persistent wind is making it almost impossible to keep the sand and seedlings on our new tee boxes moist during the day.  Sand makes a great growing medium for bentgrass in order to provide a firm, well drained surface.  However, getting seed to stay wet enough to germinate in sand is a task that requires almost constant watering.  When the wind is blowing 20-30mph all day, the sand dries out quick, even under our covers, and the irrigation heads are almost futile, seems like I end up watering more trees some afternoons. 

Irrigation blowing directly up into the atmosphere....

With that being said, if any of you have received an unintentional shot of water while you were out playing golf, I apologize.  I try hard to make sure I don't water anyone during the afternoons while trying to keep the new tees moist, but I know once or twice there has been a cart hiding behind a tree that I didn't see until I turned the heads on and drove away....

Another One Bites The Dust

Must have been a monday, because nothing went right.  We were planning on fertilizing greens, but the nuclear ND winds were already ripping about 20-30mph by 6:00 in the morning, so that was out.  After that, we changed plans for the day, Andy went to charge the pumpstation, and thats when our second major mainline blowout of the spring happened.

A 4" line had blown out on hole 6, one of the flattest holes of course, making a temporary pond in the fairway that Andy and his help had fun pumping and squeegeing up.  What first appeared like a small fix...turned into another massive trench, this one fortunately turned out to be only 24' long.  What they found was just another section of 25 year old pipe that apparently decided today was going to be the end of it's lifespan....

The silver lining here is that we took the opportunity, since the mainline was already dug up, to add an isolation valve to the new pipe when it was installed.  For whatever reason, this irrigation system (installed in 1985 or 1986, I think) was put together without any gate valves anywhere on the system.  Almost every golf course irrigation system installed in the last 20 years utilizes these valves in order to close off a section of mainline in the event of a break, allowing the rest of the system to be left pressurized and usable while only one small section of pipe is closed off so it can be worked on.  Here at GFCC, when we have an irrigation break, the pumpstation and the irrigation on the entire course must be turned off!  This is going to bite us in the rear one day when we have a major pipe break that takes days to fix during a streak of 100 degree days in July.....knock on wood. 

We are going to make a habit of adding these isolation valves everytime we have to do a mainline fix, and hopefully before too long we'll actually be able to keep some parts of the irrigation system operational next time we have to fix a break.  With the addition of this new valve, we now have a grand total of 2 on the entire course.  Somewhere around 15-20 would be a more ideal number.....but we are slowly trying to bring this system into the 21st century.

Prepping to put the new section of pipe in

Andy and Blake quite stoked to have the pipe back together
and a new gate valve insalled!

Tee Renovation: Phase 1 of 3 Complete

With construction complete on the retaining wall and tee boxes on hole 14, we are officially done with the tee renovation on the first 5 holes, essentially phase one.  Without a doubt, we saved the "best for last" this spring by finishing with 14.  All told, our retaining wall included right around 500 concrete blocks, weighing in at 55 lbs each, we hand set 27,500 pounds of concrete.  About 400 cubic yards of clay fill as well as 100 yards of topsoil was hauled in for the project as well. 

The new tee on 14 is now about 3-4 feet higher than the original tee making for a clear line of sight over the crest of the fairway in order to see the pond at the bottom of the landing area.  Also, the new tee is 8-10 feet further to the right, meaning the massive cottonwoods on the left side of the fairway are a little easier to avoid.  On the flip side, we also added a new back tee, which was moved about 10 yards further back, but also moved further left, meaning you almost have to hit a perfect drive with a little draw to keep the ball in play from back there!

Base of the wall with drain line installed

Filling hollow core retaining blocks with pea gravel

Putting the finishing touches around the new back tee

I think I missed my calling in life as a stone mason....

Finished (almost) product

The remaining part of this project is to grow in the bentgrass from seed on all the new tees.  Although sodding would definitely be the more preferred choice for resurfacing, at a cost of about $2,000 per tee, it isn't very realistic for us.  In contrast, it costs us about $60 in seed for each tee.  To assist in the rapid germination and growth of the bentgrass seed, we are utilizing some old covers we have to cover the tees with after they have been seeded.  These covers essentially act as a greenhouse, trapping heat and moisture underneath of them, which are two very vital components in seed germination. 

Evergreen Cover on the new tee on 14



13 tee for whatever reason is growing in great without a cover, and at this
point is my bet to be the first to open.

Now that we are finally experiencing some warmer days, and more importantly warmer nighttime temps that aren't below freezing anymore, the seed should grow quite rapidly.  We will hopefully start mowing a couple of the tees in another week or two, followed by some extremely heavy sand topdressing and fertilization.  I am still hopeful that we might be able to open a few of the tees by the end of the month, maybe the beginning of June.

My personal thanks to all the groups and indivuals who went above and beyond by putting forth their funds to help sponsor our tee renovations so far.  The GFCC Ladies Association for #5, The White Tee Pack for #12, Charlie Bridgeford and Brad Westrum for #13, Dr. Bob and Penny Olson for #14, and Florian and Sons Excavating for #16.  Now that the tee boxes are finished, we are wrapping up the process by purchasing the new bunker sand to go in all the bunkers we destoyed to build our new tees with.  New tees and new bunker sand all in one project, definitely some much needed improvements for the Grand Forks Country Club!

Also, my very heartfelt thanks to Gunner for being extremely generous with his crew, equipment, and funds in this process.  From the continued use of that spectacular 750 tracked skiddy, to hauling in 500 yards of material for 14 tee, and a variety of other equipment needs and favors that are too much to name.  My job would certainly be much more difficult, and half of these projects only a pipedream, without his help.

Lastly, my push for more sponsors!  Next on the list this coming fall we will be tackling #1 (Plains Chiropractic and Acupuncture), #8 (Derrick and Tara Johnson), #9 (Matt, Michelle, and Lily Bredemeir), and #10 (Sadie's Couture Floral and Event Styling).  That is only four, we need at least two more sponsors to get to an even six to try and keep this on a three year timeline. 

I certainly appreciate everyone's patience with this project also, I know temporary tees are no fun to play off of, but I promise everyone that our main focus for the next month will be to get the new tees open as soon as possible!

A Busy Two Weeks

Andy displaying the glamorous part of being an Asst. Superintendent
while working on a mainline fix on hole 10.

We seeded some sunflowers and prairie wildflowers into
the native grass areas by hole 2, 3, and 6.

Slit seeding some bentgrass seed into the areas in the collars
where the Poa in struggling this spring.

Shaping the new bunker on hole 15.

Allie learning about "grass babies" as she calls them, looking for
bentgrass sprouters on one of the new tee boxes.

New irrigation line on the new elevated tee box on 14.

One of the downfalls of pumping water straight out of the river to the
irrigation pond, and no inlet screen on the pumpstation...fish parts
clogging the irrigation heads.

Reseeding some of the rough areas that died in the summer flood last year,
we seeded the left side of 9, right side of 15, right side of 18, both sides of 17,
the slot between 7 and 10, the bottom of the driving range, and the fire pit area.

Another nice implement resurrected from the "boneyard", an old spring
tiner for discing in the seed on the newly regraded area by 8 tee.

Finally getting started on the wall for 14 tee.

New sand bottle holder area completed, the open triangle in the front
will be planted with a colorfur array of flowers as soon as the
weather warms up a bit more.

What A Difference A Year Makes



Apparently there are some advantages to having friends in high places, literally!  A buddy of mine that is a helicopter instructor for UND sent me these aerial shots he took of the course exactly one year after our flood crest last spring.  After a river crest of 49.87' last April, we crested this spring at a mere 23' and are already down around 17.5'.  See the two aerial images of the property to truly see the difference a year can make....

Grand Forks Country Club property, viewing northeast on April 15th, 2011

Grand Forks Country Club property, viewing southwest on April 15, 2012