Cut vs Fill

[Don Mahaffey]

The other day I was updating my professional resume to share with a potential client and I decided to go back over most of the projects I've worked on to see if the majority of the shapes were created with cuts or fills. That may seem like a silly question as they have to balance in most cases, but were the forms mostly created by carving in and bleeding out the spoils to good tie ins, or were they created by filling and then tying in the fill to existing land forms?  This was fresh on my mind because the architect on our current project was happy with our shaping where we had cuts and relief to work with, and less happy with the shaping we had performed in fills, and he was right, although the fills were a little stingly on the materials which made it especially challenging.


Anyhow, in my quick and non-scientific analysis, I came away with the belief that most of the really cool shaping I'd been around was the result of cutting into landforms and then bleeding out the spoils vs fills. This pretty much makes sense because that is a more economical way to build vs moving a bunch of dirt then working on it. The one exception was the fills at Wolf Point but Mike Nuzzo was on those and had planned on making sure we had enough material to build something we could then "cut" on. 


Is it harder to build a cool course on a fill vs cutting into a severe site and softening it? I think it is and i don't think it's about the guy on a dozer as much as the foundational earthwork plan taking into account that fills are just harder to appear natural.  Curious what others here think about this.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Agree and have stated same on here on a number of occasions: It is much easier to tie in and create great shapes on severe sites where you are removing rather than adding. Can give the benefit of widening out areas as well.


Although the exception to this is when working between two tight dunes for a green site (for example) where fill increases width and softens versus cut that decreases width and sharpens.

[Tom_Doak]

I have always had an easier time doing my shaping by cutting things away.  I think it's one of the things that made my work look different . . . lots of architects who learned in the 70's to 90's were all about digging ponds and using the spoils to create mounding, etc.


Mr. Dye did both well, but around greens he preferred to build the green at grade and cut-and-fill around the edges of it to shape.

[Robin_Hiseman]

Got to agree with everything said so far. The inherent stability of an existing landform is much more conducive to artistic shaping. As Don describes, it's possible to do it in fill once you have created a landform to cut into, but in my experience the end results are rarely as satisfactory.

[Ira Fishman]

Isn’t Bill Coore primarily a user of fill? Any particular reason that he prefers it?


Ira

[Jeff_Brauer]

I generally agree with all said.  However, earlier in my career I was almost obsessive about balancing cut and fill on green sites, especially on renovations where it was cheaper to do all dozer work.  And, looking back, I know I have several greens that aren't as visible and don't form the visual focus from the landing zone as a result.  So, I use cross sections and field eyeballing to set the green elevation where I think it looks best to the golfer, regardless of cut and fill.  Sometimes, it's the shadows of surrounding trees that hides greens, and I tend to elevate them even a bit more in tree lined green sites.


I have also found drainage in the approach to be an issue if its too flat.  3% is normal for good turf growth, and I generally prefer about 4% upslope to the green for the fw tie in, just to make sure it drains well.  Anything under 5% also gives me a legally required ADA Wheelchair access route, just in case I can't design one somewhere else near the back of the green......


One thing I learned from Tom Fazio (although other architects probably do it, too) is that tying into surrounding ground always works better, even with fills, if the built landforms tend to assume the angles of the natural ones, rather than drawing a plan and orienting all the mounding, etc. to the green surface itself, especially if at 90 degrees.


As to haul distances, old specs used to stipulate that hauls < 1500 feet were done at the base unit price, and contractors used to ask for $0.10 per hundred feet past that. 1500 feet basically corresponds with one hole length, or maybe moving to an adjacent hole, so most gca's try to balance each hole or group of 2-3 holes overall, even if some haul is required between the two holes to keep cost down.   If anyone still uses those standards, I'm sure that is more like $1 per 100 feet now.

[Marty Bonnar]

Just wanted to pass a comment on the environmental aspect of balancing C&F. The costs of hauling material away to landfill along with the carbon miles and possible landfill taxes involved are becoming such that it’s usually much more economical and environmentally-sensible to keep as much of it on-site as you can.
For play areas, for example, we always used any excavated material to create fun mounding and slopes for kids to run up and down or to defend as imaginary forts or castles (sometimes built palisade walls to enhance those ideas).
Topsoil is also becoming such a valuable commodity that it’s best to hang onto it or at least to ensure that Contractors aren’t ripping you off hauling it away and re-selling! (Not that any of my Contractors would ever do such a thing, mind you!)
 
F.

[Tom_Doak]

Just wanted to pass a comment on the environmental aspect of balancing C&F. The costs of hauling material away to landfill along with the carbon miles and possible landfill taxes involved are becoming such that it’s usually much more economical and environmentally-sensible to keep as much of it on-site as you can.

Marty:


I can't remember ever seeing a golf course where they hauled dirt away during construction, except for Archie Struthers' Twisted Dune, where they were selling the dirt for the construction of a new bridge/tunnel.  You can always find a place to lose the dirt, and it doesn't have to be mounds!  When a mudslide deposited 10,000 cubic yards of material at The Valley Club a few years ago, we just raised up three acres on that end of the golf course by a couple of feet, to lose it.


The harder thing to get rid of is tree stumps.  You don't want to bury them under playing surfaces, and if you are leaving trees in between the holes, there's not much place to put them.  And you are right, they are getting very expensive to take away.

[Marty Bonnar]

Tom,
I suppose that at Streamsong, what you were actually working with was the (sand) overburden from the previous phosphate excavation work?
Did that feel like an unusual position to be in or did you just treat it like it was a sand-based site anyway and go from there?
Cheers,
F.

[Mark_Fine]

The project we are working on now has been a lot of cutting and hauling which I really don't like to do but there was so much excess dirt around the greensites from a previous renovation that we had no choice.  My preference is to balance and haul as little away as possible.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,
I suppose that at Streamsong, what you were actually working with was the (sand) overburden from the previous phosphate excavation work?
Did that feel like an unusual position to be in or did you just treat it like it was a sand-based site anyway and go from there?
Cheers,
F.

That sand had sat there for so long and been windblown into nice shapes that we just treated it like we were working in sand dunes.  The one hole where we had to make a big cut, we trucked the dirt over to Bill where he needed to build a high tee in a low area.

[John Emerson]

Seems like shaping an existing landform would produce a better quality soil for long term turf health/vigor. No telling what’s
in fill.

[archie_struthers]

 


We took over 3 million tons of dirt out of Twisted Dune , and pushed around another 1.5 million . But it's so much easier to cut it and take it away than to move it around and make it look natural. So much easier.


That's why I am so impressed with Bayonne , where Eric Bergstol built it up with dredge spoils and much from the Kil Van Kull that separates NJ from NY. It's amazing!


I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product at Union League National in southern NJ also, so far so good and kudos to Dana Fr  & Jason Straka on a super interesting project also

[Adam Lawrence]

We took over 3 million tons of dirt out of Twisted Dune , and pushed around another 1.5 million . But it's so much easier to cut it and take it away than to move it around and make it look natural. So much easier.


That's why I am so impressed with Bayonne , where Eric Bergstol built it up with dredge spoils and much from the Kil Van Kull that separates NJ from NY. It's amazing!


I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product at Union League National in southern NJ also, so far so good and kudos to Dana Fr  & Jason Straka on a super interesting project also

I'm looking forward to seeing that too. Dana is operating with the same set of principles he used at Calusa Pines, and which he told me he learned from Andy Banfield at Fazio: the way to do fills and make them look good is to do big fills, and then lay the golf holes across them. If you think about the big hill at Calusa (it still makes me laugh that it is the highest point of Collier County), there are several holes that make use of that landform.

[Ally Mcintosh]

To add to a few points above, just because you are shaping using cut of course doesn't mean that you are hauling away. In fact, on the low budget, low resource projects that I have generally worked on, most of the conversation is about balancing as locally as possible: It wastes an enormous amount of time having to move material 400 yards rather than move it 100 yards. It's the biggest cost adder to a project.

There are many ways to lose the soil you are cutting away, ideally balancing in the local shaping itself. But if you do have to move it, I prefer where you can find a low hollow, valley to fill. That in itself is much easier to tie in. Alternatively - as Tom says - just raise a large out of play, flattish area by a few feet. What I try to avoid is filling by creating mounds or high points for the sake of it. These are much harder to work in to natural landscapes. I prefer to not see fill creating a high point in any given feature (unless as Adam states, it's "big" fill i.e. it defines a part of the course)

Ally

[Jeff_Brauer]

Simply raising a large area by a foot or so to waste fill is a pet peeve of mine.  Seems like it could/should be used for something other than waste.


When I draw grading plans.....dinosaur that I am.....we run the cut and fills.  Even with computers, where I work more and more in 3D, I often do pencil sketches first, plot out the cuts and fills with red and green in tracing of the contours, run the planimeter, a magic device that somehow measures irregular areas like contour lines, and see where it comes out.  Yes, it is possible to simply raise or lower the area, which shifts 1610 cubic yards per acre from one to the other (i.e., if a one acre green site is 1600 yards short of fill, simply lower the entire plan one foot and voila, it's balanced.  And for some greens, tees, or even fairways, that is a viable solution.


I much prefer to look and see where there is an abundance of too much fill and redesign to eliminate that so that instead of moving, say, 3000 CY to build a green, I might lower that total to 2,000 CY or less.  It certainly ends up lowering the project budget, and usually, eliminating excess fill (and sometimes cut) tends to look more natural, if vision to the green, drainage, etc. aren't affected.


Another pet peeve of mine, back when I had employees doing large swatches of our grading plans, was grading for the sake of grading, with one example of adding catch basins other than in the natural low points, even if changing the grades around the basin.  I have had grading plans go out, where valleys were filled and hills cut for no particular reason other than the designer was simply grading everywhere and taking liberties.  One of my rules of thumb, even when leveling mountains in Asia, was to maintain the basic drainage patterns as much as possible, even if we are raising a valley 30 meters or so.


I even flew one of my now remote draftsmen in from California on a recent project.  The land was perfectly gently rolling, but he had cut his teeth on Asia projects, and graded everywhere.  My training and instinct was that the only grading necessary was lowering a small hill that blocked the view of the LZ and another that needed to be valleyed out to see the green.  The rest was perfect 2-5% rolls, but he graded everywhere, lifting a fw bunker base up 3-4 feet, when it was visible at base grade, and grading everywhere, but really just moving the natural contours up or down a foot because he didn't realize what he was doing.


Years ago, I had a negotiation with a well known pro to be his designer on the west coast.  I went to the office, and viewed their plans.  They weren't happy at all when I pointed out that there plans were, by my standards, a bit not good.  (tried to find a nicer way to say it.)  Specifically, they graded an entire downhill fairway, again making minor changes of grade that really didn't help or change the hole, i.e., they raised most of the fw one foot for no particular reason.  Then, the drained that entire downhill fw to a 6" catch basin about 10 feet of the front right of the green, which was solely undersized, and likely led to a puddle in a place where most golfers miss.


Needless to say, they broke off negotiations, although, I can't say I was upset.  I really didn't want to work for someone else.

[Marty Bonnar]

Planimeter.
Jeff Brauer, I love you.
F.

[archie_struthers]

 




Jeff glad you gave him the gate , his loss

[Jeff_Brauer]

Seems like shaping an existing landform would produce a better quality soil for long term turf health/vigor. No telling what’s
in fill.

John, it is typical to strip available topsoil before grading, then import clay or whatever subsoil to meet grades, and then place topsoil back on top after approval of grades by the gca.  Some believe that even moving the topsoil off and back reduces it's quality, which may be true, but it's common practice to move it anyway.


It seems to me that topsoil quality is a bigger concern than ever.  In the 70's and even mostly today, you strip what you have, which is usually never enough especially in wooded areas to get even 6" cover back (and we prefer 9" on green surrounding banks).  Thus, many courses have poor soil conditions, sometimes modified by the super a tenth of an inch a year by topdressiong, adding organic, etc.


Since 2000 or so, more projects are getting full sand cap, from 6-12" depending on the sand quality, and I have done a few where we try to import 2-4" of topsoil, similar to existing, just to improve it before re-grassing, so the same turf problems don't get built in again. 

[John Emerson]

Seems like shaping an existing landform would produce a better quality soil for long term turf health/vigor. No telling what’s
in fill.

John, it is typical to strip available topsoil before grading, then import clay or whatever subsoil to meet grades, and then place topsoil back on top after approval of grades by the gca.  Some believe that even moving the topsoil off and back reduces it's quality, which may be true, but it's common practice to move it anyway.


It seems to me that topsoil quality is a bigger concern than ever.  In the 70's and even mostly today, you strip what you have, which is usually never enough especially in wooded areas to get even 6" cover back (and we prefer 9" on green surrounding banks).  Thus, many courses have poor soil conditions, sometimes modified by the super a tenth of an inch a year by topdressiong, adding organic, etc.


Since 2000 or so, more projects are getting full sand cap, from 6-12" depending on the sand quality, and I have done a few where we try to import 2-4" of topsoil, similar to existing, just to improve it before re-grassing, so the same turf problems don't get built in again.

Yeah Jeff you’ve hit the nail on the head.  Quality topsoil with any amount of organic matter is the key.  Anytime soil is disturbed OM is negatively affected.  One thing I loathe in the turf industry is companies that sell “top soil” by screening clay and calling it “high quality top soil”.  Doesn’t matter if it is screened or not...it’s still garbage.


I know why ppl use sand caps and I get it.  Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or like it. 

[Tom_Doak]

One of the problems in doing a true restoration of an old course is trying to figure out where to get rid of all the excess materials that the club has brought in over the years -- old bunker sand, fill to build up new tees and greens, etc.  Most of the architects who messed up those old courses did their work with imported fill, but it costs way more to truck it away now than it did to haul it in fifty years ago.

[SL_Solow]

Nothing to add except to say thanks to those who are contributing to this thread.  It is this type of thread that keeps me coming back because I learn so much.

[Don Mahaffey]

One of the problems in doing a true restoration of an old course is trying to figure out where to get rid of all the excess materials that the club has brought in over the years -- old bunker sand, fill to build up new tees and greens, etc.  Most of the architects who messed up those old courses did their work with imported fill, but it costs way more to truck it away now than it did to haul it in fifty years ago.

This...everytime someone renovated something a bury pit is dug to throw away the offending material (bunker liner) and that dirt must now be used somewhere. And the mistake most make (Eric Iverson just showed me where we made this mistake at Memorial Park) is, in the interest of budget control the area of disturbance must be limited. Which makes for bad work if not done perfectly.


It's so easy to just say...make big fills. To us in the industry...you hear a collected "duh!!!"  its not so easy in practice because it means basically strip mining a big piece of ground and starting over. Architects that can work surgically with positive results have my respect. Blowing shit up is easy and going big is easy compared to the guys who can create without needing a new canvas.

[Thomas Dai]

Particularly with regard to old courses could decades of top-dressing and bunker sand splash confuse the ‘fill’ aspect? Just asking.
Atb

[Adam Lawrence]

From Dana Fry re shaping with fill:



"Obviously working in cuts is way easier and building in fill is much harder and you are correct that Andy Banfield taught me that if your going to do fills the bigger the better. 


The one “big fill” at Union League National GC in NJ covers around 45 acres. It has 10 tee complexes, 9 green complexes and parts of 6 fairways in that one continuous fills.


Site existed at elevations from 14 feet to around 22 feet above sea level. Now the highest part of the big fill reaches a highest point ay 78 feet above sea level.


One of the unique things about this project is that the greens and fairways that aren’t in the “big fill” are all cut into the ground from 2 to 6 feet and are low profile.


The combination between the massive fill and the low profile cut in holes is very striking.


Calusa has one big fill that goes up to elevation 59 feet above sea level with high water level of lakes being 12.5 above sea level. It includes five tee complexes, four green complexes and parts of five fairways.


The fill at the Union League is much larger in area and the fill is almost 20 feet higher in elevation. We will have around 1.5 to 1.6 million yards of fill in the “big fill” at Union League when project is finished.


We have excavated 30 acres of lakes that are cut around 20 feet deep and all fairways, roughs, scrub areas and greens that are are not part of the “big fill” are cut into the ground three feet or more.



Other massive part of this project is the revegetation of the native areas and planting of trees on the big fill.


Project is located about one hour from Pine Valley and is in the Pine Barrons region like PV is.


We are revegetating the site with the exact same material that PV has. Basically around 13 types of ornamental grasses, ground covers and shrubs that we use over and over. We have planted well over 1 million of these so far and when completed we estimate we will have over 2 million.


Planting over 1,000 trees primarily on the “big fill”. These trees are almost all oaks, cedars and pines which are native to the site.


I was taught by Fazio that to make big fills look natural they need to be revegetated with the same exact trees that existed before.


Last major item was the lakes. At high water level they are around elevation 14 feet above sea level and at low water level they are around 8.5 feet so we have over five feet of difference so we are planting and hydroseeding multiple types of wetland plants in these lake bank slopes so that in times they are all vegetated."