Greatest Clay Soil courses

[Adam Lawrence]

Rob:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowland_heath

[JESII]

Robin,


Using Merion, Oakmont and those two greats in Westchester County, NY mentioned by TD as the points of a triangle, you could see a hell of a lot of really great golf built on clay by many of the greatest architects past and present. Some of the folks on here would be most happy to help facilitate, I'm sure.


Best wishes.

[David Davis]

When Sean starts answering out of his minds eye we are sure to get some brilliant stuff.


Indeed correct on Walton Heath. I would add it's one of the most amazing examples of brilliant maintenance that exist. Everyone who plays thinks it's sandbagged classic heathland, always playing firm and fast when I've seen it.


There is a lot the rest of the clay based golf world can learn from their maintenance practices I'd imagine.


Some consider Wade Hampton to be a great course, I can't imagine that being on anything but clay, dirt and rocks though I don't know for certain.


What about courses like Myopia Hunt Club, Somerset Hills, Baltusrol?

[Robin_Hiseman]

I love Walton Heath too, but whatever clay based maintenance miracle they can conjur up on their geologically freakish ground is not going to help me on my sites...sadly!

Typical clay examples are what I need. The kind of clay you can make bricks from.

Some good ones so far. Thank you.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Rob:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowland_heath

Adam - sorry to butt in where I'm not wanted but that says that Lowland Heath may be Dry Heath (acidic, sandy, heather) or Wet Heath (clay, non-draining, mosses)... Nothing about clay soil having a Low pH though...

I await your rebuke...

[Adam Lawrence]

I read it as saying that lowland heath was always on acid soil. But anyway, I'll send you the same document I sent Robin.

[BCrosby]

Typical clay examples are what I need. The kind of clay you can make bricks from.

It is not by chance that one of the earliest businesses in Augusta was called the 'Augusta Brick Company'.   It's still in operation as far as I know.

Bob

[Mark Bourgeois]

With Bob C on both counts:
1) Georgia red clay is known far and wide
2) helps that ANGC terrain runs from the clubhouse right down to some fancy ditches on the far side of the property

[MClutterbuck]

Many here have discussed the importance of drainage, depth, etc. I am a member of a course built 1907 with absolutely no drainage until recently. Since 1980 I believe it has not closed more than 5 days due to rain, and we get very heavy rain, sometimes up to 300mm in a day. The property is completely flat, as most courses in the city. Some courses are heavily affected by rain, but the best are not.


I believe the difference is the very detailed attention put on surface drainage by the course designers in the better courses. Mungo Park, Luther Koontz, MacKenzie all worked very diligently on their surface drainage on these properties, with elevated greens (and bunkers), and subtle elevated sections of fairways relative to rough areas.

[BCrosby]

I would add Donald Ross your list. Also impressive is that he used very few (if any) catch drains. His drainage plans were all surface drainage on clay-based SE courses in US.


Bob

[David_Madison]

I'm guessing Old Town inbuilt on clay. Almost everything in central NC more than 20 miles north of Pinehurst is.

[Tim Martin]

Yale

[Jon Wiggett]

I am grateful to Jon for his drainage advice. We are putting in a lot of perforated drainage at Woodseat Hall, none of which is as deep as he recommends, ostensibly because of the material cost of backfilling trenches to such depth, but also because we need to link in with the set levels of the outfalls. The ditches I've designed are routinely 1 metre deep and judging by the base scouring after their first winter are working as planned.

Robin,

I can understand the finance issue but you do not need to do the same type of construction for deep drains a for shallow ones. Generally, the main drains are there to transport water away from the secondary drains. As such they are following the fall of the land and so have a lesser roll in actually draining the soil profile. These drains should be packed in a gravel drainage layer and about 6" above the top of the pipework. The rest you an back fill with the original soil only using gravel to close to the surface in selected areas where there will be a significant gain to be made from draining.

Secondary drainage is that which will do most of the drainage work and go across the fall but even here if care is taken to only do a standard construction where it will catch surface water and use spoil to back fill elsewhere than considerable money can be saved.

My reasoning for depth is not only due to stopping silting up but also due to it being far better if you drain a 5 foot depth of the soil profile as this will give the course a much better resilience to prolonged wet weather.

Jon

[Ryan Coles]

Jon

Are your suggestions on depth etc standard / common and used elsewhere?

I ask as it seems logical, but I rarely see any actually install that deep.

[Jon Wiggett]

Ryan,

not these days alas. I think this is down to four reasons.

Firstly - the over emphasis on instant drainage. This is great if you want to be able to no matter how much it rains in a short time but it has several drawbacks. To my mind, it is more important to look at the long term picture not just a snapshot. Ideally for the health of the turf you want the right balance of water/air in you soil profile and this down to a good depth of 5 to 6 feet. Taking that most places average annual rainfall is going to be right for the grass types growing there then there is not an excess of water falling. By removing any short term excess water you are actually depleting the long term water household of the deeper soil profile meaning that a) rooting of the grass sward will be shallower (it should be 2 to 3 feet at least and I have seen certain grasses such as fescue go double this depth)  and b) this leads to the need for irrigation through even short dry spell which is not only expensive but often done with water that is far too cold.

Secondly - for so called costs. Again the construction of drains with the gravel layer coming almost to the surface means the deeper the drain, the more expensive it is to back fill. However, if the aim of the drainage is to ensure a balance water/air household then the gravel layer need only be used to pack the pipe and only come to close to the surface where pooling of water might be a problem. As such, it is actually cheaper on materials but more expensive on man hours.

Thirdly - from a H&S point if the trench is 6 foot deep then it will also need to be stepped and about 6 foot wide at the top to prevent danger of collapse. This takes longer to dig out and more thought is need to dealing with the storage of the spoil before it is used to backfill. On the other side any settling will not show. I have found that as long as you have the thing planned well the easiest is to dig and fill on a rolling basis which leaves only about 10 foot open over night.

Fourthly - the use of trenchers which often struggle to get down below a couple of feet

The thing that amazes me is that the old stuff at my course is often down at 6 foot (in the odd place even 9/10 foot) and this would have been dug out by hand.

Jon

[James Bennett]

On my old hills course with heavy clay soils - we got (well, they still get) 35" of rain a year, but most of it is in winter (we play year round).  Evaporation is low as the weather is often cloudy/foggy/misty.  There would be many days of high humidity but no rain, and no evaporation.  Micro-climates are important with clay soils.

The points raised above about ensuring trees don't shade wet areas, and that winds are allowed to assist with removing excess moisture are also important.  As is a planned drainage system (trunk mains, not the web-based strip drains) that shifts water from the top end of the course to the bottom,or to dams.  They can be open streams or large pipes.  But they need to be well planned to collect and shift the surface water that gets shed in a downpour.

Slit drains can be effective, but the movement of water through heavy clay can make them a slow process - they stop an over-water-logged course but won't prevent a soft course.  You need to understand the two rates of movement of water in the particular clay.  I was told our clay moved at 1mm an hour down, but only at 0.1mm an hour laterally.

So, after a downpour, any water not drained at the surface can get into the soil at 1mm an hour - not too bad.  But, if the soil below the surface is waterlogged (because of thatch or because of over-watering in the autumn prior to the wet winter) then you might only get to shift some of the water.  It could take quite a while for the water in the clay to move laterally to the slit drains.

I'm sure others with genuine turf experience could explain this better, but the severity of the clay in terms of water speed movement vertically and laterally, coupled with the local climate, potential for surface evaporation, surface drainage and closeness of trunk drains will all contribute to the final outcome during wet weather.

James B

[Ryan Coles]

Ryan,

not these days alas. I think this is down to four reasons.

Firstly - the over emphasis on instant drainage. This is great if you want to be able to no matter how much it rains in a short time but it has several drawbacks. To my mind, it is more important to look at the long term picture not just a snapshot. Ideally for the health of the turf you want the right balance of water/air in you soil profile and this down to a good depth of 5 to 6 feet. Taking that most places average annual rainfall is going to be right for the grass types growing there then there is not an excess of water falling. By removing any short term excess water you are actually depleting the long term water household of the deeper soil profile meaning that a) rooting of the grass sward will be shallower (it should be 2 to 3 feet at least and I have seen certain grasses such as fescue go double this depth)  and b) this leads to the need for irrigation through even short dry spell which is not only expensive but often done with water that is far too cold.

Secondly - for so called costs. Again the construction of drains with the gravel layer coming almost to the surface means the deeper the drain, the more expensive it is to back fill. However, if the aim of the drainage is to ensure a balance water/air household then the gravel layer need only be used to pack the pipe and only come to close to the surface where pooling of water might be a problem. As such, it is actually cheaper on materials but more expensive on man hours.

Thirdly - from a H&S point if the trench is 6 foot deep then it will also need to be stepped and about 6 foot wide at the top to prevent danger of collapse. This takes longer to dig out and more thought is need to dealing with the storage of the spoil before it is used to backfill. On the other side any settling will not show. I have found that as long as you have the thing planned well the easiest is to dig and fill on a rolling basis which leaves only about 10 foot open over night.

Fourthly - the use of trenchers which often struggle to get down below a couple of feet

The thing that amazes me is that the old stuff at my course is often down at 6 foot (in the odd place even 9/10 foot) and this would have been dug out by hand.

Jon

Jon

Thanks for explaining. Interesting to read and as I say, seems logical to me.

[Marty Bonnar]

Is nobody doing Mole Drainage anymore? Can be sensational in clay and is very light on ground surface disturbance.
This is when I wish Paul Miller from Elmwood College was a member here...

F.

PS I seem to deal with Contractors all the time who only want to dig deep trenches with their JCB's, lob in tons of gravel and some wavin coil pipe and quickly backfill when all that's really needed is some thought and common sense...aarrrggghhh!

[Robin_Hiseman]

Jon/Marty

Jon, everything you say makes sense and to a degree I have designed a drainage system on our heavy clay which incorporates aspects of what you say about the primary drainage. Where it has to pass through a watershed, or is necessarily deep underground we have made no attempt to bring the stone to the surface, but pack it as you suggest. In the fairways we took the decision to gravel and sand every drain line to the surface, even if it is running more or less parallel to the line of fall. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, the more free draining material at the surface, the better and secondly, our particular clay is very blocky and we have struggled on some of the early trench refills to break it down satisfactorily to the point where we are confident it won't slump in the trench and leave us with a surface scar. The gravel and sand capping are much more stable.

Marty, to a degree we still do mole ploughing, although not quite as you'd expect. The irrigation lines are mole trenched and act as informal drain lines criss-crossing the drainage laterals. With fairway irrigation it is nigh impossible to do effective deep drainage after the irrigation is laid, as you obviously run the risk of cutting water lines.

Pays to get the drainage right first time!

[Marty Bonnar]

This is the kind of stuff we don't do enough of on here.
Hope you liked my free endorsement! ;0)

Cheers
M.

[Marc Haring]

If you do have a clay site then you better have slopes to get rid of surface water. Flat clay sites and you have a recipe for disaster. Royal Mid Surrey!!!!

[Jon Wiggett]

Marty,

I think you may be right that mole drainage is used far less these days which is odd as it can be done very cheaply and in house.

Robin,

have you thought what effect the gravel up to the surface will have on the stability of the surface immediately surrounding the drain? Have not ever looked at this but strikes me it could lead to this area suffering collapse.

Jon

[Joe Hancock]

Maybe I read right over it, but could someone please explain "mole drainage"? I'm imagining a series of tunnels and a den......

[Jon Wiggett]

Joe,

a mole drain is basically a single blade vertical plough with a bullet shaped part at the bottom. It is pulled diagonally down and across the slope behind a tractor to create a narrow slit with a drainage space at its base. It can be very effective in clay soils and can be effective over anything from a few months to a couple of decades. Hope this helps.

Jon

[Joe Hancock]

Thanks, Jon.

So, it's basically a vibratory plow with the pipe-puller attachment, but no pipe is being utilized. I'm imagining a void in the soil at the depth of the plow blade, and that's the thing that is being relied upon to drain excess water? Does the plow line usually terminate at a low point on the land, or some other method of alleviating the water? Or is it dependent upon some sort of soil characteristic to disperse the excess water?

Appreciate the sharing.