Picture Pleasure

One of the advantages of starting your work early in morning... You get to see some stunning sun rises..

Heating Fuel Tank Leak

A tank that contains the heating fuel which feeds the Greenkeepers maintenance facility needed some parts replaced following a small seeping leak from the outlet point. Before the part could be replaced the remaining fuel had to be pumped out a pumped back again after.

Borehole

Sometime during August the borehole was not supplying the irrigation with water. The Borehole was originally drilled in 1998. After investigation such as electrical tests, etc, it was identified that the borehole pump was faulty. The Borehole pump sits 80 metres deep with a 1-1/2 inch rising main.

The pump is connected to the bottom of the rising main which is in sections of 3 metre lengths. These have to be pulled up using an A-frame rig with an electric winch motor, unscrewed and removed section by section until the pump is reached.

When the pump is reached it is removed and replaced. The process then continues as each section is then reconnected and placed back down the borehole to its required depth. This is now the 4th Pump installed since the borehole was drilled in 1998.

This picture shows the actual pump (the silver section at the bottom)

Dryject / Greens Maintenance

On Thursday 15th August 2013 we completed our greens maintenance using  a new process/technique known as Dryjecting. This is a relatively new concept here in the UK aimed at improving the soil profile, it has been used in the USA for many years.This process is an alternative method to aeration that utilises highly pressurised water to create fissures in the root zone. While the fissures are being created, the machine’s patented vacuum technology simultaneously fills holes with amendment (kiln dried sand). DryJect is thus able to create an aerated root zone without the time consuming process of traditional aeration methods (removing cores, collecting of cores, filling with sand and topdressing). The benefits of this process are: Aerate, amend and topdress all in one pass; encourage deeper root penetration and improve drainage.

The machine has to be continuously filled/topped-up with the kiln dried sand material. The holes you see on the surface do not necessarily show the full extent of the process as the sand material spreads out under the surface as shown in the diagram above, rather than remain as a single column like coring.

Three days after the process the surface was recovering quickly in comparison to other practices.