Doug,
Courses in the midwest with bluegrass are possibly the best opportunities to limit irrigation. As you say, it goes dormant, but may not ever really die, as its adapted to that climate. Bent and Ryes would be a different story, so if you wanted top notch playing surfaces, you would need some irrigation - and, as someone mentioned, the will to not overuse it.
I will direct this next question to my esteemed friend Larry Rodgers - How do you keep costs in line now? I often feel a "slave" to my irrigation designers, who tell me how much I have left over for the golf course!
All kidding aside, irrigation used to be 25% of budget, and now its often 33-40%.
For a while, I have thought the most practical approach was to put sprinklers everywhere you need to grow grass, but limit pump station capacity, which seems to have grown from a typical 1800 GPM ten years ago (and maybe 1250 GPM a few years before that) to 3000-4000 GPM now. That doubles pump station costs and mainline pipe size.
In other words, whern some places, like Philly, limit watering to something like 21 MIl Gallons a year, why design a system that could put 5% of that out in a night? It does happen in my experience.
Conversely, the cost of putting pipe and sprinklers in out of play areas rather than temporary irrigation does not seem to save much money after considering the hand watering costs, and it is always available if needed.
It always strikes me as odd that while the "national dialogue" is towards conserving water, somehow the golf industry keeps pumping up the ability to deliver water with larger pump stations. I know there are reasons for that, including the Owners desire to get maintenance off the course more quickly so players don't see it, the ever present golfer desire for green, the possibility of being blamed (or legally liable!) when turf dies and someone decides the irrigation designer didn't give him the necessary tools (I have heard of this happening) and the quicker grow in cycles which require temporarily higher demand. So, the Owner must realize that he needs to have a nine and nind growing schedule. In the last decade, perhaps it didn't make economic sense, but with rising prices, maybe it will again.
And the fact that while you can pump more water through systems doesn't necessarily mean that the course needs to get more water, it just means it can in an emergency. However, does it make sense to go back to the "every other night watering" systems that we used to have, and purposely limit the superintendents ability to water?
As far as I can see, the worst case scenario of cutting the GPM would be that a few days in August might require delaying start times or quitting tee times a bit earlier so you could run the system longer. No owner likes to lose summer revenue, and as long as water is available, that might not make sense, but is that a factor in your calculations? 2 hours times 30 players times 50 bucks , or $3000 revenue loss a few times each year vs. the debt of an extra couple of hundred thousand for a mammoth pump station and main lines?
In short, I don't think the market would allow no irrigation in the fairways, but I am asking an expert just how much we could reduce it. Of course, I know the answer - hire Larry on the next project and he will be glad to tell me!
