[Tim Liddy]

If I asked you to reduce the use of fossil fuels by 50% for the maintenance and/or construction of your golf course what would you suggest?

[John Kavanaugh]

Eliminating bunkers will get you close.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Eliminating carts closer still

[RJ_Daley]

Rechargeable electric mowers....

Coolee laborers...

[Jim_Kennedy]

Move to electric greens mowers - only mow collars every other day.
Maximum twice weekly bunker raking.
Weed whack less often.
Use growth regulators, if feasible.
Leave more areas in a 'natural' state - from beginning to end.
Leave all equipment where it sits during coffee breaks/lunch hour and "Car Pool" workers back and forth.
Use one less utility vehicle.
Buy sand/soil locally.
Design a course so that it needs fewer specialized machines to maintain it.
Be energy smart around the barn - use low energy bulbs, shut off computers when there not being used, etc..

  

[Peter Wagner]

Hi Tim,

We've been playing around with an idea to decentralize our maintenance equipment storage by building several smaller garages in hidden spots around the course. The idea would be to build lets say a 2-car garage behind some trees next to the 4th fairway and to put some maint equipment there.  In the morning staffers would be dropped off at these garages and then jump on mowers etc to do work in that area.  When done they are returned to their garage and the staffer gets picked up and brought back.

For this study we aren't 'fuel focused' but rather we are looking at possible labor savings.  Staffers spend a good part of their day just getting to the other side of the course.  We are studying if it makes sense to assign a team to let's say 3 or 4 holes vs the traditional method of labor allocation.  There are several issues with decentralization but I think it's worth studying.  Never thought of the fuel part of that.

Best,
Peter

[Doug Siebert]

Peter,

Obviously its too late for a course that already exists, but wouldn't it make sense for architects to think about this when designing the course, and trying to have the maintenance building in a central location rather than on the edge of the course as is typically done?  I usually see a combination maintenance building/cart barn so you end up with the carts being ideally located but the maintenance equipment having to travel quite a ways to get to the furthest holes.

[Peter Wagner]

Peter,

Obviously its too late for a course that already exists, but wouldn't it make sense for architects to think about this when designing the course, and trying to have the maintenance building in a central location rather than on the edge of the course as is typically done?  I usually see a combination maintenance building/cart barn so you end up with the carts being ideally located but the maintenance equipment having to travel quite a ways to get to the furthest holes.

Hi Doug,

Yep, I agree with you that the time to think this through is in the design phase.  Luckily we have 4 or 5 out of the way pockets that we could use for this.  I'm not at all sure that this decentralized idea is the way to go - we are just looking at it.

But yes, a maint building in the middle of the course would seem the most logical from a daily maintenance perspective.  It's just a guess but I would say that the maintenance area is one of the weakest design features of many courses.  All too often it seems to be an afterthought.  This is made all the more strange by the fact that an archie's reputation is sometimes diminished by poor maintenance years after they are gone. 

To counter that, I can see where it would be a tough sell a client on using some prime chunk of land for an ugly maintenance building.  I'm not sure I'd die on that hill.  I think it's worth making that an option at the very start.  Ease of operation and lower operating bills might be part of the pitch?

I'd be curious how a typical client (oximoron?) would respond to mundane details like a centrally located maintenance building with greenhouse and mini sod farm.  Too much to sell?  I would guess it would be.

Regardless, we have what we have and now we are looking at ways to improve our operations.  Decentralize?  Don't know yet.

Best,
Peter

[Michael Powers]

Taking the carbon footprint of other industries into account, there are much bigger fish to fry.

[Jon Wiggett]

You don't need to use electric mowers as the hybrids on the market are very good and the electricity you use to charge the batteries probably isn't any greener in its production than a hybrid. Try going for the natural look and instead of a strimmer use a scythe. In trained hands just as quick and a lot less messy.

But maybe before you start asking about making golf greener just check what you have standing on your drive

[Tom_Doak]

Tim:

I've just been talking to one of my clients about this subject and I think I've found a way to reduce maintenance and construction input by 60%.  It's a pretty simple concept, really.

I've suggested they only build nine holes.

It's a resort in an ecologically sensitive area, and though they want golf as an amenity, they don't figure to get that many rounds per day.  So, it was pretty silly for them to think they needed 18 holes.  I think I've sold them on building a really good nine ... and because the best nine holes will likely be on the ground which is easier to build on, I figure it will save them 60% and not just 50%.

I've been asked to speak at a class at Cornell next week about this very subject and I'm curious to see what they have come up with.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tim -

I'm far from an expert on this, but I think that in terms of reducing overall green house gas emissions it's important to remember the vast amount of carbon per acre that is sequestered in/by undisturbed ground, ground that for decades has had native plants/grasses growing there for example.  Some (most) of the studies and numbers I read about reducing carbon emissions make my head spin - I just don't understand them. But I think I can understand the concept that an acre of, say, a perennial like switchgrass,  holds undergound about 7 tons of carbon -- much of which would be released into the atmosphere if the ground was turned. All of which is to say, I'd try not to disturb the earth too much to begin with.

Tom D - a very nice story; a blend of the practical, the economic, and the sustainable all in one.   

Peter

[Brent Boardman]

Tim:

I've just been talking to one of my clients about this subject and I think I've found a way to reduce maintenance and construction input by 60%.  It's a pretty simple concept, really.

I've suggested they only build nine holes.

It's a resort in an ecologically sensitive area, and though they want golf as an amenity, they don't figure to get that many rounds per day.  So, it was pretty silly for them to think they needed 18 holes.  I think I've sold them on building a really good nine ... and because the best nine holes will likely be on the ground which is easier to build on, I figure it will save them 60% and not just 50%.

I've been asked to speak at a class at Cornell next week about this very subject and I'm curious to see what they have come up with.

Tom,

Are you talking about the same project Brian referred me to?


Brent

[Ken Moum]

To counter that, I can see where it would be a tough sell a client on using some prime chunk of land for an ugly maintenance building.

You could do something like they did at Briggs Ranch in San Antonio. The maintenance facility was going to be visible from some housing on the property, so they built a replica of the Alamo.

Ken

[Tom_Doak]

Brent:

I was talking about a different project, but I'm trying the same approach on the one you mentioned -- not for sustainability issues, but because it doesn't look like they have enough land for 18 holes as it stands today.

[Bradley Anderson]

Merion bluegrass fairways cut with nine gang tractor drawn mowers, 40 yards wide.

Triplex mow greens and tees instead of hand mowing.

Don't moonscape the roughs with mounds. Moonscaped mounding adds dramatically to the area of a golf hole.

Hand rake bunkers. Build bunkers below grade with collecting turf around the sand, so a small amount of flat sand goes further towards providing a formidable hazard.

Plant trees in clusters. Avoid line planting of trees which interferew with the rough man's alacrity of mowing.

Avoid home lots and corridors so the parallel golf holes can share rough.

[Mike_Young]

I think I would probably cut my irrigation head count for fairways and rough by 50%......less growth, fetilizer, fungicide, mowing etc  ........and electrical power....

[Bradley Anderson]

The greatest gas guzzler in a typical golf operation are the trucks and personal vehicles.

Contract snow plowing and delivery of parts and supplies. Give the superintendent a monthly vehicle allowance and let him buy his own gas.

[Bradley Anderson]

Clubcar utility vehicles use the least amount of gas. Cushmans and Toro Workmans use three times as much gas to do many of the same jobs. But you need the Cushman and Workman utility carts for certain jobs - bullwork. But for cups and servicing the tees etc., the Club cars save a lot of fuel.

[Mike_Young]

The greatest gas guzzler in a typical golf operation are the trucks and personal vehicles.

Contract snow plowing and delivery of parts and supplies. Give the superintendent a monthly vehicle allowance and let him buy his own gas.

This is where I have a problem with the "hybrid" technologies we hear.....It takes fossil fuels in most cases to generate electricity and to make fertilizer etc....
ALSO of note since thinking further.......IN CONSTRUCTION..move less dirt.....a dozer can use 140 gallons of deisel per day...

[Bradley Anderson]

I agree with Mike Young about growth regulators.

I tracked fule usage on fairways for several years and growth regulators cut fuel usage by 30%.

Another tick I found for cutting fuel usage on fairways was to burn the mower lines in on the least turning angles, and to follow those lines for days without changing them up. When the lines get burned in good you can skip mowing form time to time and no one notices because the fairways keep the stripes even when you skip a mowing.

[Bradley Anderson]

The best way to conserve fertilizer on a golf course is by adding a tenth of a pound of urea and sulfate of potash to every fungicide application. At year end you use only a pound of N and K and you get better results than when you apply three or four times that amount with conventional granular applications.

[Bradley Anderson]

Another good trick is to set aside unmown areas in the rough, but mow them until late May when the seed heads form, then let them go to seed without further mowing until fall.

When the grasses are allowed to go to seed they transfer energy to seedhead production and growth is throttled way back. And golfers can still find their ball without holding up play.

[Bradley Anderson]

To short fuel usage on construction would be a mistake I think because there are motions in construction that might set up for ease of maintenance for perpetuity, particularly at the teeing ground.

For instance, if you know what is needed for your tee elevation, relative to the hole and how it sets up for the first shot, you might consider filling a broad area around the teeing ground so that the traffic leading to it, and the mowing the embankments around it are all executed from a level area as opposed to a steeply sloped walk-up. The best example of this principle that I know of is at the Merit Club.

[Bradley Anderson]

Another gas guzzler at golf clubs is ornamentals.

Flower and shrub beds can require a lot of traffic too and from the maintenance shop headquarters, and they do not necessarily further the golf business.

Every ornamental addition to a golf club has to be evaluated on a cost to benefit analysis.

I know of great golf clubs, where people are waiting in line to join those clubs, and they do not have flower or shurbs beds ad-nauseum.

In 25years of maintaining golf courses no one has ever complimented me on my flower beds, but I have had a lot of compliments about my greens.

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