Tough Spring For The Irrigation System!

The abundance of irrigation breaks this spring is attributed to a long cold winter and an aging irrigation system.  The pipes in the ground are an old type of pvc that has a very thin wall and in turn gets very brittle with age.  The pipe in the ground is pushing 40 years old so we are starting to get more and more breaks as we start the system up.  We are at 16 sprinkler breaks and 5 main line breaks already this spring.  We also ran into problems during the recent hot stretch of weather not having the whole system working.  We ended up having to run tanks of water around the section of the course that is lacking the irrigation because of broken lines.

We are hoping we are finally getting ahead of the problems but every time we have a break, that takes away from the detail work we could be accomplishing on the golf course.

Mike O'Neill, GCS