[Norbert P]

Which auto mechanic is the master at changing spark plugs

                  The Late Great Henry "Smokey" Yunick           (May 25, 1923 - May 9, 2001)    
                   

[Norbert P]

 
   The problem with talking about drainage on a forum is that it is a very objective part of golf course design.  It's not rocket surgery but it has to be well planned, effective, and be virtually invisible.  It's inglorious work but without it, the wonderful subjectivities of the golf won't work.  But what do I know,  I'm only the master of drain bramage.

  BTW, the drainage on the Castle Course looks simple, but I don't know the Scottish laws on runoff retention.  Is there a treatment/recycle facility near the shore or is it drained directly to the North Sea?  Though that sounds less than ideal, I'm sure the fert program is much less than it was as a farm.

 

[Adam Clayman]

For those who have the opinion that Mother Nature is the best, it's very hard to argue, HOWEVER, even the best draining soils (Pure sand) can have episodes of significant rainfall that require some assistance to move the excess water.

So, drains, while necessary in manufactured bowls can also be needed in natural ones. The problem isn't the use in the infrequent case, it's the repeatedly finding them on nearly every hole i nearly always the same location as it relates to the hole. i.e. Chipping area.

[Kyle Henderson]

Strantz renovation/redesign of the Shore course at the Monterey Peninsula CC was commisioned with drainage as a primary concern. Aside from sand-capping the entire layout, can anyone comment as to the excellence (or lack thereof) of the surface drainage? Is the drainage better (or worse or equitable) at the adjacent MPCC-Dunes, Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, or Cypress Point courses?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Melvyn,

I agree on the common sense part and we could both find examples of that being ignored.  Sometimes, its not just because we can with budget, but because govt. agencies mandate drainage policies that are at least somewhat lacking in the common sense dept in that they require us to drain water uphill (or more specifically away from the natural waterways) to filter it.

But, sometimes its the money, too, or just design. While I am not against a well placed catch basin, for reasons oft stated, I went to play a nice budget course by a former associate.  I laughed when I saw a catch basin between tee and green on one of the highest points of the property.  No question that he didn't think that one all the way through, and for a course built on a budget, i could have found better places to spend money than running a drain line up the hill there.  At least, I think I could but never really studied it that hard so as not to ruin an otherwise pleasant golf experience!

Its hard to generalize about drainage on a thread like this other than to say it does require study and hard work to put it only where needed.  As I mentioned in my first post, it seems as if many here would favor isolating each hole as a small island where it only has to drain what falls on it, and thus we would have the benefits of both worlds. No soggy swales and no cb's in the fw.

[Ron Kern]

Being a civil engineer by education and a drainage engineer for five years, for the then Indiana Department of Highways where I designed drainage for everything from a 12" dia. culvert to bridge openings for major floodways, to urban storm sewer systems, and most everything in between for that matter, because of the subject, I cannot help but delurk, but just for a moment.

A funny thing happened one day when I was out at Purgatory G.C.  It had been raining cats and dogs for a several days and Purgatory was the only course open in the area.  I was in the pro shop when a customer asked one of the golf pros why the golf course drained so well.  He answered "because we have sandy soil."  I had to laugh out loud as the soils on the 218 acre site are heavy clay with a perk rate of about 1" per 30 days, maybe.  The only thing the soils are good for are lining lakes.  I proceeded to tell the customer and the pro this little fact and inform them that that we sunk over $250,000 in drainage materials alone (not incl. bunker and green drainage) into the ground.  The drainage plan, including linking the lakes for retention, was very sophisticated and got runoff off of the surface and underground ASAP.  We had to build up the 13th fairway up 3.5' to 5' just to get it to  drain to the adjacent low point on the property.  The ground water in this area was all of 6" below the existing surface grade in the spring.  I asked the pro, from that point on, if he had a question about the golf course's design and construction to give me a call.

[Jed Peters]

Strantz renovation/redesign of the Shore course at the Monterey Peninsula CC was commisioned with drainage as a primary concern. Aside from sand-capping the entire layout, can anyone comment as to the excellence (or lack thereof) of the surface drainage? Is the drainage better (or worse or equitable) at the adjacent MPCC-Dunes, Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, or Cypress Point courses?

Bob is probably better suited to answering this than I, but having played MPCC numerous times, and in the wet, I would say that the shore plays firmer and faster than anything in the area.

It plays more "down" even then cypress, and cypress pretty much plays "perfect".

As far as drainage goes....I'm sure that Shore is better draining than everything OTHER than Cypress down there (if it's wet it's been suggested by my host we play Shore) only because I've never played cypress in the wet.

[Jake Straub]

My 2 cents on this topic are as follows:

Collect and pipe as much surface water coming onto the property as possible.
As I recall a well respected superintendent was once asked in a GSCAA magazine what the three most important things were to a new golf course.  His response "drainage, drainage, drainage"
No one has talked about seepage drainage and the effect that has on playing conditions?  Why not?


One question that I do have is how deep are gca's putting there drainage into the soil?  I'm asking about corrugated not solid pipe.

 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jake,

When using corrugated pipe for french drains in a herringbone pattern to dry out a generally wet area, generally the deeper the better since it can drain ground water further away.  (even sub surface water has a hydraulic gradient, i.e., flows slightly downhill) , since that is .  So many superintendents wish they could go deeper with their drain systems, but are limited by how deep their mechanical trenchers dig, so usually the practical limit is usually about 4', and many supers and contractors don't go that deep because trenching production slows down dramatically as depth increases.

That said, in many instances where there is a localized wet spot, we usually dig the trench until we see the water running and then put it in right at or just below that elevation to pick up the water as it crosses the drain line.  Subsurface water is a funny thing - cover all the known problems with tile this year and next year, others will pop up just past the end of your tile.....another reason to dig deep - your pipe needs slope and the deeper it is, the more length you can expand it.

[Jake Straub]

Jeff

You touched on a interesting topic when you said

Subsurface water is a funny thing - cover all the known problems with tile this year and next year, others will pop up just past the end of your tile.....another reason to dig deep - your pipe needs slope and the deeper it is, the more length you can expand it.

Subsurface or seepage water in my mind is more important for firming up a golf course than surface drainage and this is my reasoning behind that statement.  (Assuming that most fairways are native soil and not sand capped) When you have constant seepage water the soil profile has less water holding capacity, so when you get a small rainfall like say less than .3 inches you may have playing surfaces that are playing extremely soft, like a large weather event has taken place.  Think about that from an irrigation standpoint and you can have the same result....now from a soils standpoint if subsurface/seepage drainage is not installed and your soil always has some water in the pore spaces smaller rain events are adding to this bank of water and creating a scenario that mimics a large rain event making it hard to every firm up playing conditions unless a drought event takes place. 

I hope this makes sense.

[Mike_Young]

Jake,
A few years back we had a seepage problem from springs and rock on a particular course....An engineer gave me some basics to stop it and it worked....
The fairway sloped from left to right....He had us track hoe a ditch parallel to the fairway on the left side that was 3 feet deeper than the lowest side of the right side of the  fairway....It was piped and graveled and it stopped the seepage....Expensive but it will work.....

[Ian Larson]

Makes more sense than relying on worms.

[Lester George]

John Glenn Muckley - I would put him up against anybody.

Lester

[Melvyn Morrow]

Ian

Anything makes more sense than the mess you modern guys have done to our courses, but then you know better, after all, are you not supported by all that technology. The humble worm just goes about his life not worried about money

Then who is the real worm or has it just become a can of worms 

Melvyn

[Mike_Young]

Melvyn,
I am a worm.....and not just any worm....I am your worst nightmare...a worm with a cart

[Melvyn Morrow]

Mike

Not much of a worm if you use a cart. Come on Man, play golf and leave the toys behind.

Melvyn

[Ian Larson]

Pipe laid underground is barely modern technology Melvyn. And even the sandiest of sites need help sometimes. Should a course built on loam and clay rely on the worms? Is the best surface drainage shaping going to take care of everything during stormy seasons? And doesnt a business model like the one at the Old Course, pumping the foursomes out for revenue, perpetuate the need for golf courses to be drained as quickly as they can so the foursomes can continue to be pumped out and the cash pumped in? Will the worms insure the quickest drainage possible? No way. Id still be interested in hearing what the land the Castle Course sits on looked like before it was tilled over and over for farming.


My answer to catch basins that are at the bottom of every swale on a golf course, on the fairway or around the green, was to not edge them. I was taught to just allow the grass to grow over the grates. The grass didnt impede the flow of water because it had no thatch or soil to perc through. And it made it less of a nuisance for golfers balls coming to rest on them. They were also out of sight and didnt look obnoxious.

[Norbert P]

John Glenn Muckley - I would put him up against anybody.

Lester

  No disrespect to JGM, and I sense that he has "The Right Stuff", but that IS an unfortunate last name for a drainage expert.

    

[Bradley Anderson]

This a 1924 Alison drainage plan. I think it shows how sophisticated subsurface drainage was back in the day.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Melvyn,

With all due respect, one quote from hundreds of years ago is not proof positive that worms aid drainage. I have no doubt that in tight soils, the pore space they opened up improved percolation greatly. I have seen similar results with aerification holes and soil pulverizers that fix drainage, at least for a while, by making the soil less compact.

But, we could also probably find hundreds if not thousands of quotes, studies, articles, etc. showing how drainage is so important to turf that many other ways of handling it were developed for different situations by conscientious supers, engineers, builders and gca's.  The Alison plan just posted shows that.

I am pretty sure you are not advocating for long soggy swales on golf courses.  I suspect that you and many others object more to the rampant use of catch basins near greens especially to create the currently fashionable chipping areas, which are designed in to create more interest than repetitive bunkers.  Depending on where they are located, they get drains in the bottom.  And that makes golf courses look different than they did a hundred years ago, and a you don't like that look.

That of course is a fair enough opinion with which I wouldn't argue.  But to argue that the old guys knew bette and relied on worms is, I think wrong, as is your notion that no one tried to profit from golf until the last twenty years or so.  When do YOU think the altruism ended?  I would date it no later than the OTM feud over the featherie, eh?  Or the first time they sold a spectator ticket or charged an entry fee to the Open perhaps.  If no one made money on golf, it wouldn't have survived as long and as well as it did.

[Jake Straub]

Jeff

I have seen similar results with aerification holes and soil pulverizers that fix drainage, at least for a while, by making the soil less compact.

This statement along with the worm conspiracy theory brought up by Melvyn are both on the same page as worms are considered natures aerifiers, with that being said though all you have done with any aerifciation/ drill and fill/ worm tunnels  is make the bath tube deeper.  Thus your comment is bang on, that this fixes for a little while, but to do it right you still need to add the drainage evacuate the water.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Jeff/Ian

Perhaps we need to understand and perhaps study the history of our game.

Worms were used on TOC until Hamilton killed them in 1904. Up to then many of the old newspaper reports state that the course did not suffer badly from heavy rain and Old Tom warned Hamilton of the error of his ways. The feeding of the grass with the new mixture with the demise of the worms caused first much pooling on the course and for the next 6to 8 years the TOC was deemed as being in rather poor health, finally improving by the time of WW1. These are not my words but reports found in papers from the Citizen, The Evening Times and the Scotsman. They also do not come from a single article.

I am not saying that it’s the answer but God why do we have to make things so complicated in the modern world of ours. Jake to a point I agree but again I come back to my point that site select is important and must be 'Fit for Purpose'. I believe TOC is while The Castle Course is not hence why it required full reconstruction after stripped bare.

Again if you study history you will read of the bunkers filling about 12” deep with sea water due to the sea level and Old Tom raised the height of certain bunkers making them shallower in the process. Old Tom also cultivated the worms certainly on the Greens generating a result of a greatly improved course that did not have a tendency to flooding after a heavy down pouring.

Search and you will find these articles, it’s about history of golf course architecture, a learning curve that made the 19th Century Designers great. Mock the worms, but they worked and for a lot longer than many of our new courses have been around with the added bonus of not having to destroy the natural surface of the site to do so. That would I presume have saved a considerable amount of money.

Ignore history at your peril, Hamilton did and paid the price in the end. All I am saying, we should keep an open mind – oops that is something that many on this site refuse to do as perhaps they know better.  Of course I am not referring to you.

Melvyn 

[Bradley Anderson]

Melvyn,

The worm also leaves a nasty clump of soil on the surface behind. And on putting greens that can obviously mess up a good putt. Here in the states the worm can be a huge problem on fairways, actually killing grass from all the soil that is brought up to the surface.

Anyways, the worm holes won't help much when the subsoils are at point saturation, and that is very often the situation here in the states, and beyond our control. I know how much you value things being natural, and for me drain tile helps me to keep the course as close to natural as possible. In fact if I had the choice between a state of the art irrigation system or a state of the art drainage system I'll take the drainage. Good drainage can actually reduce chemicals.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Melvyn,

I know what you are saying and I think there is somewhat a return to simplicity going on as we see that more complexity only causes different problems rather than solve what we set out to solve.  That said, not all sites are perfect sand, low play courses and differnt course call for different drainage horses!

[Steve Lang]

  perhaps experts are only really local.. i sure don't want someone from scotland doing my drainage in houston unless maybe they'd worked in malaysia with the same soils

monthly precipitation averages and yearly sum data ( inches)

edinb,uk    li,ny          li, ks           houston     chicago     ogallala      singapore
2.2   3.56   0.4   3.94   2.17   0.5   7.8
1.5   2.75   0.49   3.02   1.77   0.3   6.1
1.5   3.93   1.94   3.31   3.01   1.3   6.7
1.5   3.68   2.32   2.81   3.65   1.8   5.6
2.1   4.16   4.14   4.68   3.7   3.4   6.2
1.9   3.16   3.06   6.35   4.3   3   5.5
3.3   4.41   3.3   4.96   3.68   2.7   5.7
3.0   4.09   2.8   4.92   3.86   1.6   5.6
2.2   3.77   2.08   5.05   3.21   1.3   7
2.6   3.26   1.39   5.45   2.71   0.7   6.6
2.4   3.67   1.11   4.1   3.32   0.6   9.9
2.2   3.51   0.45   3.59   2.63   0.6   11.0
                  
27   44.0   23.5   52.2   38.0   17.8   83.7

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