What do you do with demo cart path material...

[Don Mahaffey]

build a burn.
In Hobbs, NM at the new Rockwind Community Links, Architect Andy Staples wanted to use a burn type feature to deliver recycled water to the irrigation storage reservoir. We wanted to use onsite materials to construct the burn...caliche rock, grass down the edges, or maybe demo cart path material but we were unsure how it would turn out. The cart path material works and with an excavator and hammer, not as difficult as it may seem to get this look and very cool golf feature that also provides an important function.

[Peter Pallotta]

Don - to my eye that looks absolutely terrific, both in and of itself as well as in relationship to the New Mexico location and look/feel all around it. (It has a white-washed adobe sensibility). Really nice blend of form and function!

As an aside, I played an old course last week (18 holes with 6 Par 5s for a grand total of 5800 yards) that had not a single bunker on it -- not one, anywhere. But what it did have was a burn/ditch/stream that twisted and turned throughout the entire site, and seemed to come into play always, and it worked very well. 

Peter

[David_Tepper]

Sonoma Golf Club did the same thing 12-15 years ago with a demo-ed concrete cart path. The creek bed running in front of the 18th green was already there. They used the broken up slabs from the cart path to solidify the banks of the existing creek bed in a similar fashion.

[Bill_McBride]

Sonoma Golf Club did the same thing 12-15 years ago with a demo-ed concrete cart path. The creek bed running in front of the 18th green was already there. They used the broken up slabs from the cart path to solidify the banks of the existing creek bed in a similar fashion.

I'll bet Don's banks look better than rip-rap (busted up concrete)!   That's a great look. 

[Lou_Duran]

What is "demo cart path material"?  If you are talking about old cart paths which have been broken up and the material removed, my old club used to dump the stuff (concrete, asphalt, some rebar) into a large creek which carried a lot of storm water and it looked really bad (the jagged edges would trap plastic and debris, the exposed chunks when the water receded made the creek look like the dump that it was).  The club also tried to bury some of it away from playing areas with limited success (eventually becoming exposed, and coming into play).

[David_Tepper]

"I'll bet Don's banks look better than rip-rap (busted up concrete)!   That's a great look."

Bill M. -

The way the broken up concrete slabs were stacked along the creek banks at Sonoma GC is very similar to how they look in the pictures above.

DT 

[Lou_Duran]

"I'll bet Don's banks look better than rip-rap (busted up concrete)!   That's a great look."

Bill M. -

The way the broken up concrete slabs were stacked along the creek banks at Sonoma GC is very similar to how they look in the pictures above.

DT 

Are you saying that the stacked blocks were cut from the old cart paths?  I've never known concrete to break so uniformly.  And the rebar?  If so, great work.

[Bill_McBride]

"I'll bet Don's banks look better than rip-rap (busted up concrete)!   That's a great look."

Bill M. -

The way the broken up concrete slabs were stacked along the creek banks at Sonoma GC is very similar to how they look in the pictures above.

DT 

Must have saw cut it all.  Haven't played Sonoma for 20 years, my favorite North Bay course. 

[David_Tepper]

"Are you saying that the stacked blocks were cut from the old cart paths?  I've never known concrete to break so uniformly.  And the rebar?  If so, great work."

Lou -

I don't think the stacked blocks at Sonoma were "cut" from the old cart path. My guess is the cart path was just broken up. I don't think the cart path had any rebar in it before it was broken up. There is certainly no rebar visible.

Since the left and right edges of the cart path were straight, it would be easy to lay the broken slabs so that the jagged edges of the slabs were placed against the creek bank (and not visible), while the straight edges of the slabs were visible.

That is all speculation on my part!

DT
  

[Don Mahaffey]

I deserve no credit for the wall.   
It is 100% demo cart path and no saw cutting.  Cart path had fiber, no re bar. 
It is broken with a hammer (chisel) on an excavator.

[Peter Pallotta]

David T - I think your speculation is probably spot on. And don't forget that the top-side of the cart path would be smooth as well, aiding in the stacking  (which because of the random sizes and textures of the 'rocks' the eye sees as more uniform than it actually is). Wouldn't want to have rebar in cart paths, I don't imagine -- want to let the individal slabs (separated by expansions joints/fiber) move a little independently of eachother to account for some earth settling/movement without cracking. Anyway, I worked a lot of construction over the summers and that burn-wall looks like a heck of lot of work/mixing and matching sizes etc, but done very well.

Peter

[Lester George]

Pete Dye just did the same thing at Keswick.  Those demo paths were stamped concrete with a brick pattern and color.  I think Andy's looks better.

Lester

[Jeff_Brauer]

It does look great and one of the more innovative things I have seen.  Good work, Andy.

Thank God in this case that construction standards got so lax back in the day.  After years of using Fiber Mesh, most of us are now going back to putting some steel re-bars or mesh of some kind in the concrete.  Fiber Mesh just didn't hold up quite as well as advertised, at least in TX soils.

[Wayne_Kozun]

If the course has a "burn" then no buggies should be allowed without a Doctor's note!

[JC Urbina]

Don,

 At Brickyard Crossings, Pete Dye used race track retaining wall in the same fashion that Andy did on the burn.  He had the crew stack the wall interlaced like your photo to hold up a teeing ground.  It maybe gone by now, that was back in 1994