Should surface water run off or be piped away?

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Here's a drainage question.

I met a prominent UK greenkeeper (who shall remain unnamed) a few years back who proudly told me he was remodelling his Harry Colt course (which shall remain unnamed) so that the surface rain water could shed away from the greens surrounds and not collect in pools.

I criticised him for messing around with Harry's Artwork and said he should have had collectors and piped away the water.

I've come across the theory frequently that surface water should be shed and not allowed to collect and that collectors or catchpits are unwanted.

What is your take? How many pages will this thread go?

[Mark Bourgeois]

French Collection drains and related folderol are the crutch of modern designers and / or a symptom of golf courses being built where they shouldn't.

Like grapes to wine, architects should be pressured not to take the lazy way out. Design and build a course that uses passive drainage yet doesn't resort to French collection drains.

Note: edited to avoid confusion.

[Joe Hancock]

Mark,

I was going to respond to the initial posters' question, but I'm going to address your comment first.

What is your understanding of a french drain?

Thanks.

Joe

[Colin Macqueen]

John,
I much prefer the water to be drained away by the lie of the land.  If my wish is to be granted this may mean that the immediate green surrounds have to be greatly extended to provide the gently sloping and undulating sward required. I have often noticed that where the "drain" mouth is frequently becomes the common gathering spot for balls missing a green which negates quite a bit of the particular character of any given green. Further to this the gathering area ends up being chipped and dinged from excessive pitching. So I think natural run off is the way to go.

Cheers Colin

[Mark Bourgeois]

Joe, my bad, brain fart. I meant collection drains / catchment basins. I hate those things!

[Randy Thompson]

Jon,
This shouldn´t go more then one page. It depends on a lot of factors, mainly the tyoe of soil and the infiltration and perculation rates and secondly the weather patterns of how often and how hard it rains. Greens should always have some kind of sub surface drainage and Surface drainage. We try to have a mínimum of three surface exits for surface drainage on a green. Where surface wáter exits we usually try to install a catch basin near the green to get it off the surface and into  a sub-surface system. A good rule of thumb for áreas outside of the green, in an área that recieves heavy rains and has a poor draining soil is to allow the wáter to drain by the surface but catch it every hundred yards or so and send it to the sub surface system. If you have a decent draining soil you can avoid pipes by digging a hole one or two meters wide and deep and fill the hole with gravel and the last six or to twelve inches with sand and then add sod. That way the wáter accumulates in the hole and gradually works it way down into the native soil and this is usually referred to as a french drain.

[Adrian_Stiff]

French drains and related folderol are the crutch of modern designers and / or a symptom of golf courses being built where they shouldn't.

Like grapes to wine, architects should be pressured not to take the lazy way out. Design and build a course that uses passive drainage yet doesn't resort to French drains.

Totally wrong Mark - Golf course architecture is about what is good for the turf as well as providing an interesting course. Both are fine to use and there are 'best' solutions for every different type of way of getting rid of the water or indeed not encoraging it.

[Joe Hancock]

Mark,

Understood. No one here likes basins that look like a basin.

John,

Having worked in many soil types in both cool and warm climates, my non-technical response to the initial circumstance is that every situation is different and there is no solution that works everywhere.

Where soil types and climate are less than ideal(read: not sand or ample sunshine), some way of getting surface water into a pipe and moved away from the area of play is necessary. It doesn't have to be a basin that looks bad. (My term for the worst implemented basin? The drainus. You can imagine the shaping of such.) It can be a small grate opening to a pipe located in a natural low spot near the green( or other feature). Or, it might be a subsurface drain bedded in gravel or sand, well below grade so as to affect watertable issues. In other words, there's many philosophies, materials and implementations of drainage, and the wise architect/ builder/ golf course superintendent will learn about and use several methods based on conditions.

Joe

[Mark Bourgeois]

Adrian and Joe:

Have you seen where a collection drain was used and thought it wasn't necessary / you saw a better solution?

[Joe Hancock]

Yes, right on the edge(within 15 feet) of a lake, draining to the lake.

I likely have more issue with the shaping that facilitates drainage than I do with the drainage structure itself.

Joe

[Marty Bonnar]

The Drainus. I love you, Joe Hancock.

[Joe Hancock]

And they said drainage couldn't be fun......

You're welcome.

[Tom_Doak]

I used to be a stickler for designing in favor of surface drainage and putting as little into pipes as possible.  I felt that pipe was a waste of money and that it encouraged over-shaping.  

A major factor in getting my routings right is to avoid drainage problems -- by locating the landing areas and greens in spots that feature natural surface drainage, and skipping over and around any areas where drainage tends to collect.  There was almost zero subsurface drainage [apart from tile drains under the greens and bunkers] at High Pointe, Black Forest, Stonewall, Beechtree, Lost Dunes, or Apache Stronghold ... and, more recently, at Cape Kidnappers and Rock Creek and Dismal River.   They all relied 100% on surface drainage.

On top of that, I later learned, if you collect the water straight into a pipe and discharge it straight into a water body that is the worst solution environmentally, because any chemicals or fertilizer residue will go straight into the water body with the run-off.

At Pacific Dunes, the entire site was a series of sandy pockets, with a random depth to a sandstone layer that would hold water.  We had to pipe the bigger pockets, but instead of bringing open drains to the top, we kept loops of perforated tile just under the surface to take the water in ... a method we had borrowed from Kingsbarns, who borrowed it from work that had been done on The Old Course at St. Andrews a few years prior.  Over time, some of those drains have gotten clogged and had to be dug up, but it sure as heck beat having your ball collect on an inlet in the fairways for all these years.  We have used the same method on other sandy sites that were relatively flat.  But we did not put in any such drainage at Barnbougle or Ballyneal, because the sand seemed to take all the water we put on it, and there is really no good place to run drains to.

On my two big earthmoving projects -- The Legends and The Rawls Course -- there are major trunk drainage lines to take all the run-off to the ditches [at The Legends] or the irrigation pond [at Rawls].  I tried to be efficient in finding just a few main points to collect as much water as possible, instead of having little pockets everywhere.

I do think our approach to drainage [and my stubbornness about it] is one of the things that makes our courses look different than most other new courses, although hardly anybody notices what the underlying reason is.

[David_Elvins]

Anything landform that funnels water invariably funnels golf balls as well, leading to repetitive golf. 

Broad slopes not only allow for surface drainage to be spread over a larger area but allow for a much larger variety of recovery shots around greens as a ball that misses a green will end up in a much greater variety of places over time. 

[Randy Thompson]

Yes, right on the edge(within 15 feet) of a lake, draining to the lake.

I likely have more issue with the shaping that facilitates drainage than I do with the drainage structure itself.

Joe

I wish I had a dollar for every catch basin that I have seen installed on the high point of a mound!

[Paul Gray]

French drains and related folderol are the crutch of modern designers and / or a symptom of golf courses being built where they shouldn't.

Like grapes to wine, architects should be pressured not to take the lazy way out. Design and build a course that uses passive drainage yet doesn't resort to French drains.

Totally wrong Mark - Golf course architecture is about what is good for the turf as well as providing an interesting course. Both are fine to use and there are 'best' solutions for every different type of way of getting rid of the water or indeed not encoraging it.

But to link to Mark's point, active drainage is fair more likely to be required on a site which is less than ideal for golf, i.e. what Mark refers to as a site where a golf course shouldn't even have been built. No?

And what does "good for turf," in the context you use it, actually mean?

[Sean_A]

This is a strange question.  I don't see a big issue with piping so long as the course design is efficient at taking away water...sometimes that isn't enough to do the job.  To be honest, I wonder if some of the classic British courses could due with some serious drainage work...though I would have thought piping would be a last resort.  Whatever the case, water must go.  Its crazy to have known areas of standing water occur for 10, 20, 40 or 50 years without it being dealt with.

Ciao

[RJ_Daley]

And what does "good for turf," in the context you use it, actually mean?

Adrian certainly can answer for himself.  But, I believe the issue is that it is better to get a problem area drained by whatever means suitable to that particular soil and terrain situation than just rely on surface drainage that isn't adequate in various seasons.  It simply isn't good for turf if due to inadequate drainage, soil saturates in the root zone and is subject to boiling in sun, or winter kills of freeze/melt cycles in our northern climates when snowmelt and rains are extreme.  There is nothing more anti-golf than an approach that is the consistency of chocolate pudding because while it may appear flatish or even sloped, due to surrounding terrain, water is first to saturate the soil in the area of an approach or key area of and LZ. 

As Tom Doak states, he spends a great deal of time in routing to find LZ and likely playing areas through FWs and approaches and surrounds where he can get adequate surface water moving as a primary method of achieving drainage and turf root zone percolation that makes sense to the quality of playable/interesting golf strategy. 

Years ago when Hepner was still with Renaissance GD, I visited an old classic course they were renovating.  The think Hepner seemed most impressed with the old Leonard MacCumber design, was the cleverness achieved in moving surface water on a relatively flattish site, that the old architect-engineer who worked with Raynor designed.  It was so subtle yet effective. 

[Jonathan Mallard]

I would think that a big unknown to the original "should" part of the question is whether the specific drainage field will be self contained, or conveyed off site.

Doesn't that change the discussion?

[archie_struthers]

  

Hey David Elvins , that is so good, and repetitive collection areas for water certainly lead to bad design. I abhor collection areas on golf courses , which I have talked about ad nauseum on other subjects . 

Get the water out of there, use pipe if you must , but don't hold it in swales and hollows around the green ,

[Mike_Young]

Moving water is all about speed.  A catch basin is going to be limited and much slower than sheet drainage.  But a soil that is ideal upon initial construction can change if not watched closely and stop draining.  We had a Master Plan project in Costa Rica for an older course there and they were requesting all types of piping.  However if one checked the fairways they had over 6 inches of thatch which acts like a sponge.  Until the thatch was removed no drainage would work.  And it happens on sand also....  so IMHO if you remove water quickly whether by pipe or sheet then your issues will be miniscule.

[Don Mahaffey]

If golf were to look at design, construction and maintenance like most urban large landscape projects (ever wonder why there is no longer any urban golf development?), then the correct answer is not surface run off or pipe away, but contain and manage the precipitation that falls on the site.
Golf in an urban setting has always been about getting rid of water as quickly as possible. Those great sites in the middle of nowhere with great topography that makes the golf we all grown to love are not just about great golf. They are also about great golf without disturbing the natural drainage patterns. That's why it looks like crap when an architect brings the same tool box he uses on a flat, clay site to a sandy "golfy" site.
Now, if we could just learn to bring the tool box from those great sites to an urban setting, then we'd learn how to manage storm water, but that will not happen until golf design makes a paradigm shift. And I'm not expecting that anytime soon.

If you want to learn more about what I'm talking about, go to http://www.sustainablesites.org/rating-system and learn about the LEED type program for large landscape areas. So far, no golf course has been certified.
Here is an excerpt from the rating section on storm water drainage:

Requirements
••Retain the precipitation volume from the 60th percentile precipitation event as defined
by the U.S. EPA in the Technical Guidance on Implementing the Stormwater Runoff
Requirements for Federal Projects under Section 438 of the Energy Independence and
Security Act (or local equivalent for projects outside the United States).
••Retain precipitation volume through on-site infiltration, evapotranspiration, and reuse.
--Implement runoff-reduction strategies (e.g., biofiltration through plants, soil) that
also improve water quality.
--Cisterns, if used, must be implemented in combination with other approaches to
meet the requirements of this prerequisite.
••Ensure the section of the site maintenance plan (see O+M P8.1: Plan for sustainable
site maintenance) is complete and includes the maintenance activities used to ensure
long-term effectiveness of stormwater features.
Note: On sites where the retention of the precipitation volume from the 60th percentile
precipitation event is not feasible due to site constraints (such as clay soils, high
groundwater elevations, geotechnical issues, below-ground contamination, underground
utilities or transportation systems, watershed water balance considerations, low
evapotranspiration rates, or lack of water use potential), retain the maximum precipitation
volume possible on the site up to the 60th percentile precipitation event.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Most sites are not blessed with super drainage where no pipework or little pipework is required. Surface run off is the best and quickest and cheapest but on heavier soils you can only throw the water so far. So combinations work best. Integrating the mechanics into the natural golfscape is the skill.

Consider this as the flipside as DM talks about. Water is better off contained somewhere for re-use as the irrigation water. If you can find a way of storing one years supply then you are efficent as a golf course. In the UK on a hot summers day metered water for a 36 hole course if it has full fairways is getting closer each year to a £1000 per day....have your own it is zero plus it is super environmentally friendly.

If you are going to contain then you need pipework of course. No one size fits all, but IMO whilst this may be the mundane bit this is far more the normal work of a golf course architect, than discovering.

Whilst clay sites have their limitations, making lakes is cheap. Making lakes in sand is not cheap. For every plus there is a minus and counterbalance. The great golf sites are clustered in the UK meaning a man from one part of the country may have to travel many miles to golf if lesser sites were never considered.

[MClutterbuck]

But to link to Mark's point, active drainage is fair more likely to be required on a site which is less than ideal for golf, i.e. what Mark refers to as a site where a golf course shouldn't even have been built. No?

And what does "good for turf," in the context you use it, actually mean?

Paul, do you believe some people do not deserve to play golf near to their homes? In some areas, you can go hundreds of miles without finding land that drains well.

[Mark_Fine]

If you watch an old classic course drain during a heavy rain storm it is pretty amazing to see how those older architects moved water across their golf courses.   

Unfortunately today, soooo many older courses have basically become "catch basins" for runoff from new development that has grown up around them.  That water has to be properly managed as it passes through the golf course.  Believe it or not, sometimes it has to be retained on site and then released offsite in a controlled manner.  These creates all kinds of new challenges for golf courses.  Surface drainage alone is just not enough. 






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