Is Drainage A Guessing Game or Science?

[Mark_F]

Probably not the sexiest topic available, but, as per the topic headline, which is it?

Is drainage something that has to get revisited off and on, or is it something that should be nailed the first time?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,

In my humble, yet experienced view, surface drainage is a pretty well known science and not hard to grasp - water flows downhill.  If you have a spot without surface drainage, add a catch basin and pipe it away.  If you have a long swale where water concentrates, and its likely to be soggy, add catch basins every few hundred feet, even if it does drain naturally.  If housing surrounds the golf course, try to add drainage outside the cart paths to cut off those larger flows before they get to more critical turf areas, etc.

Even sizing pipes is a well known science. Many formulas exist, but for small watersheds ou use the rational formula, which multiplies the chosen/expected rainfall per hour (usually only need to drain 1/4 to 1" on golf courses, accepting periodic submergence due to economic reasons) by both the acres draining to an outlet, and a percentage of the rainfall you expect to run off, given the soil type, slope, etc.  Then you go to charts to figure out how big a pipe you need and at what slope.

The trickier part of drainage is subsurface water flows.  I can't tell you the number of times you add French drains to pick it up, only to find it exits 50 yards away next year.  It really does seek the easiest path, and once you block that via grading or piping, it seems to find a new path.

Or, as one consultant I know says, superintendents shouldn't expect to add drainage to a course every year.....just the years they work there.

In a way, surface drainage needs change, too.  Houses get added uphill, carts dig ruts that now fail to drain, etc.  They account for a lot of added drainage.  I sent a CAD draftsman to Graves and Cornish Harvard seminar years ago because they knew nothing of golf.  When Cornish presented a typical drainage budget of $50K, my guy questioned it, saying we averaged 3 to 5 times that.  Geoff replied that over ten years time that is probably what it would take, but he never put it all in at the beginning, which was the way in his prime.  Over the last 30 years, cheaper, easier to handle PVC and HDPE plastic pipes have made drainage a bigger component than it was before, the theory being if you know you will need it, it ends up being cheaper, plus better integrated into the design if you do it up front.

[Jonathan Mallard]

VERY well know science.


Quite a few people get professional engineering licenses in all 50 states specializing in the field.


Don't know how much research is going on annually, but imagine it would be enough to build a couple of courses each year.

[Mark_F]

Thanks very much, Jeff - that's a brilliant reply.

Cheers.

[Tom_Doak]

In a way, surface drainage needs change, too.  Houses get added uphill, carts dig ruts that now fail to drain, etc.  They account for a lot of added drainage.  I sent a CAD draftsman to Graves and Cornish Harvard seminar years ago because they knew nothing of golf.  When Cornish presented a typical drainage budget of $50K, my guy questioned it, saying we averaged 3 to 5 times that.  Geoff replied that over ten years time that is probably what it would take, but he never put it all in at the beginning, which was the way in his prime.  Over the last 30 years, cheaper, easier to handle PVC and HDPE plastic pipes have made drainage a bigger component than it was before, the theory being if you know you will need it, it ends up being cheaper, plus better integrated into the design if you do it up front.

Mr. Cornish's approach was partly motivated by the practicality of not wanting to spend any more money than necessary, until one was sure that the extra drainage WAS needed.  If you put in 5x what he did, but you only really need 3x, is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I guess it's cheaper up front, and saves the superintendent a lot of work later.

[Peter Galea]

To be a good superintendent you need common sense and drainage.
What you lack in one, make up with the other.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I'm sure I DON'T ever recall anyone taking out drainage once its put in.  I doubt I put in too much....and even then, we still add for years.

Even today, on my MN project, they called to say we needed a bit more drainage on the right side of 9FW, after we put in a new 24 inch pipe.  The water keeps coming, finds a way around, and keeps rolling down hill.  In addition to our main drainage budget, we have $5-10K allowances for field use.  A few of our change orders are for $5-10 more, a few times.  Of course, its a springy area.....as described above.

[Greg Chambers]

You can never have too much drainage...but you can end up with not enough...

[Ally Mcintosh]

You can never have too much drainage...but you can end up with not enough...

Greg,

I'm not sure I completely buy in to that old adage, primarily because more drainage means more money, more disturbance and sometimes an excuse for lazy routing and shaping.

But yes, I get the point. I just don't like to see over-design if at all possible (even though I also understand why over-design regularly occurs).

[Sean_A]

Ally


I don't know about you, but I have played very few courses which couldn't do with more drainage work. Poor drainage is the bane of British golf. 


Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

I'm sure I DON'T ever recall anyone taking out drainage once its put in.  I doubt I put in too much....and even then, we still add for years.

Of course you are not going to take out drainage after the fact.  Lots of courses also over design their irrigation systems, and afterward, they turn off a lot of the heads, but they don't take them out.


I'm not saying that you put in too much drainage, or that I haven't failed to put in enough on the occasional project -- I have, especially on clay sites.  I'm just marveling how much more drainage your sites need than mine, I guess, although a bit of the difference could be how we route our courses differently and where the natural problem areas come into play, or don't.  I'm going back to Stonewall next month for the Mid-Amateur, and I often think about how little drainage we put in there, yet it generally drains just fine, because the land has so much tilt to it.


I have been blessed to work in sand often, but also to not have to worry about setting a drainage budget in advance of finding out where the problems are.  At Tara Iti, for example, we found huge volumes of underground water getting close to the surface on three of our fairways, requiring a lot of work we hadn't anticipated originally. 


On the other hand, we didn't put in anywhere near the $400k we put in at Pacific Dunes, which was all about insurance for a problem that had cropped up on the original Bandon Dunes course, even though we doubted it would affect ours to the same degree -- we just agreed that it would be a lot more expensive to put it in retroactively, through the tangle of irrigation pipes.  And, that illustrates the degree to which irrigation and drainage are much more interlinked than they should be.  You'd think that most sites would have problems with one or the other, but not both ... and yet on most projects I have seen, there seems to be a positive correlation between spending on the two, instead of a negative one.

[James Bennett]

Water is a lazy beast, and has a mind of its own.  It goes where it decides it will go, which is rarely where you think/want it to go.

The combination of slope, soil, turf choice, shade and inflows from neighbouring properties all add to the analysis, along with any issues you have with getting the water off your property.

It is amazing how fixing one area can also solve problems downstream.  And, if you block the path of water drainage (eg by building mounds) then the issues in a wet year can be quite severe upstream.

Mark, I suggest there is a lot of science.  The guessing game part is about how much drainage you need (and where), which is due in part because you don't know how wet an area gets initially, and it might take a few years before you get that one in five year wet season that really tests the drainage system.

Of course, some drainage problems can be solved by irrigating less.  No drainage required if the soil profile isn't saturated prior to the rain starting.

James B

[Peter Galea]

Thanks Mark, for bringing this topic up.
I just found this site:


http://water.usgs.gov/edu/mwater.html


It'll be a good read.

[Peter Pallotta]

Well, it may be a science but I think most of us can make pretty good guesses about what parts of a golf course/hole are going to be wet, even the first time we lay eyes on them.

What rankles is getting to a course I haven't played before, standing on the tee and almost immediately recognizing an area/low spot that doesn't drain very well -- and then finding, after I've hit my drive over there to that wet and soggy spot, that this is precisely the spot from which the green opens up to an ideal approach.

If architects can't always solve the drainage problem, they can at least make sure that the problem areas don't coincide (via their routing and bunkering and green contours) with where most of us will be hitting most of our shots to/from, most of the time.

I know I need to accept walking through a soggy, saggy and muddy mess, and sometimes several times a round, but for the life of me I can't find a good reason why I should be hitting from such wet patches. 

If an average person like me can "see" the problem areas, I'm sure trained architects can too, and indeed much better than I can -- but I think architects might sometimes fall in love with their routings/plans and then are loath to give up a potentially "great hole" because of drainage issues, and so make themselves believe that they can solve the issue with pipes and earth moving and thus save the hole.

To them I'd say: please be willing to sacrifice that great hole, because if its strategy depends on hitting from perennially wet areas of the fairway, it actually isn't a great golf hole anyway, and never will be.     

Peter

[Mark_F]

Mark, I suggest there is a lot of science.  The guessing game part is about how much drainage you need (and where), which is due in part because you don't know how wet an area gets initially, and it might take a few years before you get that one in five year wet season that really tests the drainage system.

I reckon Peter Palotta says quite clearly what I may be getting at here, James:

Well, it may be a science but I think most of us can make pretty good guesses about what parts of a golf course/hole are going to be wet, even the first time we lay eyes on them.

I know everything has to work to a budget, but surely on some areas, it is better on to be in overkill mode at first than by going back later, which not only disrupts play, but surely also costs more?

[Sean_A]

Pietro


At times I do find it surprising that certain parts of courses are wetter than others, especially on links.  A lot of times, one needs to know the history of the land to understand the wet areas because the lay of the land doesn't always reveal its true nature.  At my course we have a few wet areas...one is because the fairway only became terra firma 100 years ago!  There is another spot which for the life of me I don't know why it gets wet, but it is the worst spot on the course.  Of course, the course rarely holds water long enough for the golfer to fully understand the water pattern...the super should have a complete understanding. 


In any case, I agree with you that archies can do better with routings to mitigate water and walking issues, but in many cases man-made drainage and better tree management can go a long way to helping out.


Ciao 

[Thomas Dai]

What is the effect of the tide on the nearby watertable likely to be?
atb

[Adrian_Stiff]

It is not a guessing game but often areas are wetter for no apparent reason and defy the sane reasons and equally some areas are dryer than perhaps they should be given other nearby areas.


The reason is not a guess but due to the underlying soil and without test holes every metre at a metres depth you are not going to know.


Some soils no matter how much drainage you put in will drain sufficently well to allow 365 days dry golf.


Some courses in the UK it is not cost effective too continue to add drains. If you are draining at 2.5 metre centres you are probably better to change the soil.

[Tom_Doak]

The only drainage problems that I have been truly surprised by over the years are when we have built a course over a normally dry year, and then the water table fluctuates higher a year or two later due to heavy spring rains [or whatever].  You can see this on links courses, too ... The Old Course is very close to water table, and in the wettest years they used to get big puddles in some of the lowest areas and the bunkers, before they installed a massive underground drainage system about 20 years ago.


I have had the opposite problem, though, too.  Lost Dunes was built when Lake Michigan was at a cyclical high water mark, and we made sure all our fairways were well above it.  But ever since, the lake has been two to four feet lower, and so is the water in all of our lakes, since the water level there is directly tied to the water level in the big lake.  At its worst, it was so bad that the pump intake was too shallow, and they had to build a separate holding pond above the water table to make sure the irrigation system would work.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

Yeah, I have been surprised building in dry years and seeing how wet a course is later.  I recall a landscape architecture professor teaching us site analysis.  He said in an ideal world, an architect would spend a year, maybe two, absolutely learning a site, but in the real world, the Owner usually hires you when he wants something done NOW.