Thank you Peter.
I'll continue to pile on.
The 3 sprinklers are really 2 with a single quick coupler - a spot to plug in a hose.
Shivas,
With USGA greens the defacto - the green cavitiy (sand that drains faster) has different water requirements than the surrounds - usually native soil (drains slower).
If there were single heads - either one area would be too wet or one would be too dry - generally speaking.
So they have 2 - one for the green and one for the surrounds.
Another concern is the spacing - as the spacing gets tighter there are more pairs of heads all around - so the likelyhood of one coming into play are greater.
Drum roll - at Wolf Point we have 750 heads for 90 acres of green & fairway.
We have uniform conditions throughout the course so only single heads - usually only 4 or 5 to water a green (yes there is one quick coupler per green - but very hard to find and always in the back). Our spacing is much longer than anyone would ever reccomend - when I first told a vendor what we were going to use - they gasped - and eventually tried to have someone else talk us out of the spacing.
The way Don maintains the course the heads are almost grown over anyway - no way you could find half the heads around a green.
It was my ideal to have as little in the ground as possible - but Don was the one who knew how to do it - he gets the credit for the heavy lifting - I could have never been that aggressive - or would I have know what to do...
The new systems in theory water less as they provide perfect coverage so you only have to water exactly where you need it. But there are two factors - Tom Doak has said many times that he's never seen a super with a new system not use it to its high watering potential because no committee wants to spend $2MM on a new system and have it not be green. That is a generalization, but not as bad as TIMS!
Don's alternative and now mine - it to just water less!!!The reason the head count can be so high on a single course - say 4,000 - is they use pairs on the fairway and roughs - every grass has a different water requirement and thus its own sprinkler system.
I greatly appreciate the work Duane and Rod did at BlackHawk - Rod is also Mr. Practical - Don and Rod can shoot it out one day to see who is the original Mr. Practical!
A question for you Kyle or super:
If you have part circles around a green with funny angles - how do you tell a technician to go water the green a certain amount? Every head needs to run a different amount of time....