$120,000 a Year To Maintain Bunkers?

[Mark_F]

A report in a golfing publication down under had Peter Thomson calling for reduced maintenance costs in an effort to encourage more people into the game.

It was written in the body of the story that Metropolitan golf club was believed to spend over $120,000 per year just to maintain their bunkers.

How on earth do bunkers cost this much to maintain?

Would the cost be halved(or more) by the simple measure of leaving them unraked?

Or are their other factors involved?

[corey miller]

I know of some clubs in Westchester NY with "Tillinghast-Winged Foot style bunkers" albeit with Pam Anderson Collagen lips around the edges that are paying almost six figures in ADDITIONAL cost after they were redesigned and renovated by a noted and popular area renovation expert.

Not sure if this includes the cost for the water that is needed to help keep sand on the upslopes.

I would be intersted in knowing the cost of raking bunkers once a day.

[TEPaul]

The cost you mentioned is probably not much in some cases at some courses.

There's a very famous and respected golf course who I will not name who was spending up to 40% of its annual maintenance budget on bunker maintenance and its annual maintenance budget is huge to boot.

I'd love to see it but I seriously doubt any respected golf course can get away with just not raking their bunkers at all. Up until about 10 years ago PVGC didn't rake or much maintain the sand in their bunkers but they were really unusual in that vein (I wish they'd go back to that practice as they could certainly set an example).

I can tell you that we went from sand-proing our bunkers to hand raking them and the cost difference was negligible.

Yes, the annual maintenance cost on bunkering can be and does involve a whole lot more than just raking!

[Willie_Dow]

Tom - How many bunkers can you use a sand-pro vs by hand at your club ?  Would this have some bearing on the maintenance cost ?

[Richard_Mandell]

I would love to hear from Superintendents some hard numbers on sand pro-ing bunkers versus hand-raking myself on an average bunker of about 750 square feet and a "Tilly-Pam Anderson" look.

I find that it is very difficult to get creative with a paint gun in the field when the super requires sand-pro access.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but your noses, capes, bays, etc. tend to get repetitive from the simple quality of the sand pro's turning radius.  Other than a perfectly round bunker, almost all bunkers can not be 100% sand pro accessible.

Let's here some hard costs and time fiigures from Supers.

[TEPaul]

Willie:

Although we do use the sand pro on our bunkers sometimes, last year we decided to go to hand raking our bunkers rather than generally sand-proing them, and the cost difference is negligible.

We stopped using the sand pro primarily because it was hard and time consuming to get the sand pros in and out of the bunkers because even the lowest lips are pretty high and they often need to go in and come out on planks which gets time consuming.

[Mike Nuzzo]

At $1 per foot, sounds like if the costs are too high, they have too many bunkers...
Where was that thread that the only good bunker is a small one?

[Willie_Dow]

Tom - The Divotees played Glen Mills the other day, and I was impressed by the number of bunkers that were sand-pro'd.  This might be a good access for info.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

120K sounds like a lot of money, we certainly could not afford that cost.  

However, is there an ongoing effort to renovate and rebuild the bunkers?  If so wouldn't the $120K number be easy to reach?  Average costs to renovate bunkers are?

Speaking of Sand Pros the machines are not as good as hand raking, particularly heavy use of the machines cause damage to entry/exit points.  The sand pros are quick but can cause some problems.

This is one expensive hobby!  

[ed_getka]

Are there any advantages to Sand pro's other than speed, which sounds fairly negligible given you have to get them in and out of the bunker?

Are Sand pro's used mainly in really big bunkers or all bunkers at the courses that use them?

[Michael_Stachowicz]

This an interesting question, let's do some math.

Maintenance friendly, medium maintenance:
Sand Pro 4 times a week at 4 hours (4*4*$10) $160
Rake edges by hand 2 times a week  (2*4 hrs*$10) $80
Mow once a week with riding mower (16 hours * $10) $160
Trim edges once a week (8 hours *$10) $80
Hand Water bunkers slopes (2 men * 4hours a day * $10) $80
Misc include fertilization, weed control, washout repair, sand addition (2 hours a week * $10) $20

This is $580 a week or $20,880 a year.

Maintenance intensive, medium maintenance:
Sand Pro is replaced by 4 laborers, but edges are raked at the same time (4 laborers * 4x week * 4 hours * $10) $640
Mow bunker banks done with push rotaries (8 men * 16 hours * $10)  $1280
Everything else stays the same
$2100 a week or $75,600 a year.

My per year was a 36 week golf season.

The numbers are broad asumptions based on passed experience doing both kinds of maintenance at multiple courses and should be used only to illustrate the difference bunker designs can make to the budget.

So I guess $120,000 a year is definitely possible with the right conditions and maintenance level.

I hope this helps.

[Ryan Farrow]

Does this cost include mowing grass around the banks where a riding mower like a Sidewinder or Ransome can not get to?

[Bill_McBride]

Mike Stachowicz, does that $10 represent direct labor cost, ie the crew member's hourly wage?  In that event, your total is probably 40% of what the actual cost is, given burden, overhead costs, supervision, equipment lease or depreciation, fuel, maintenance, etc etc etc.

[Anthony_Nysse]

Alright,
  These are rough estimates on what we done here at Long Cove:
 For the months of March-November:

 Flymow Banks (1x per week)4 men x 6hrs x $10/hr= $240/wk
 Edge Bunkers (2x per month) 2 men x 6 x $10/hr=$240/month
 Raking Bunkers (6x per week) 5 men x 4 x $10/hr=$1200/wk
 Sand Shifting (1x/ 2 month) 6 men x 10 x $10/hr=$2700/9mths
 Primo Bunkers (2x/ month) 1 man x 3 x $10/hr=$30 plus primo ($85 in primo/)
 In Season total (39 weeks) is $63,175
 
Out of season (dormant grass)
 Edge Bunkers (1x per month) 2 men x 6 x $10/hr=$120/month
 Raking Bunkers (6x per week) 5 men x 4 x $10/hr=$1200/wk
 Sand Shifting (1x/ 2 month) 6 men x 10 x $10/hr=$900/3 mths

Out of Season total (13 weeks) $16,860
Yearly total (52 weeks) of $80,035
Please not that we do not have sand flashed bunkers, therefore we do not have to do alot of sand pushing after a big rain storm. These numbers do not include cleanup of bunkers after a storm. (limbs, pinestraw, pinecones, resodding)

Hope some of this help...

Tony Nysse
Asst. Supt.
Long Cove Club
HHI, SC

[Ron Farris]

Anthony, thanks for sharing that information.  Does your edging of bunkers include the so called waste bunkers?  I often wonder if PB gave much thought to the cost of maintenance when things were being built.  

[Anthony_Nysse]

Ron,
  Those above numbers do not include edging waste areas. As I'm sure you know, we have waste areas on #1,2, 3, 6, 8 , 9, 10, 15, 16 and 18.

 Maintenance of Waste Areas
 Edging/cleanup (5x/ year) 5 men x 25hrs x $10/hr=$1250
 Rake waste areas (2x/week) 2 men x 4hrs x $10=$80
 Sod work and watering (summer)4 men x 30hr x $10=$1200

Total Maintenance of Waste Areas: $11,610
 Note-These number also do not include cleanup after storms, water removal and coquina replacment.

Tony Nysse
Asst. Supt.
Long Cove Club
HHI, SC

[cary lichtenstein]

Tony:

How much for additional sand thru out the year you have to add

Cary

[Anthony_Nysse]

Cary,
  I don't know know the exact cubic yards of sand, but we'll add about 2 inches to a third of them a year-$5000-$10,000 is sand. The waste areas we don't really touch as the coquina is hard to come by, but it heavy enough that it doesn't really move around in the waste areas.

Tony Nysse
Asst. Supt.
Long Cove Club
HHI, SC

[Mark_F]

Tony,

Thanks for those interesting figures.

Wouldn't have thought that raking them would cost that much.  Seems as if we could do without it...