8-25-19

Good Morning,

This past week we spent a lot of time on our regular scheduled maintenance programs.  The irrigation system has been running steady every night and the irrigated areas of the course are still growing rather nicely.  The non irrigated areas have become dormant and only need to be mowed once in a while.  We are down a staff member so it has made some evening mowing as well.  By the end of this past week I was very pleased with the condition of the golf course.

Irrigation repairs continue to be a steady part of the work week.  I repaired several more electrical connections, replaced some damaged heads, and adjusted irrigation schedules on the computer.  I still have a couple of irrigation heads that are not working correctly (#5 white tee box) but will get those repairs completed on Monday.  The repair process is not extremely difficult it is simply very time consuming.  I have gained a lot of ground the past couple weeks and I feel good with the operation of the irrigation system.

The rainfall totals really reduced the irrigation needs the first half of 2019.  The well was never turned on until this month and has only run for 144 hours.  Six days of running the well for the entire year to date has never occurred.  The golf course is irrigated with over 450,000 gallons of water each night on a full program.  The well pumps 432,000 gallons of water in 24 hours.  Our water permit allows the well to pump over 26,000,000 gallons of water into the pond each year and irrigate over 39,000,000 gallons of water onto the course.  We have only used a fraction of these totals in 2019.  Probably the lowest totals ever in 20 years.

We had a few greens with damage that occurred back in March from the heavy rains and rapid snow melt.  These areas have been plugged earlier in the year and we topdress them on a regular basis.  They have filled in very nicely.  This past week we added some smaller plugs to help speed up the repair process.  These areas are low areas on the greens that drain very poorly.  We will continue to topdress them until they are no longer noticeable.

The irrigation pond has been treated on the west side (#5), the north side (#11), and the southeast side (#12) for algae control.  The copper sulfate crystals have removed almost all the algae in these areas.  There is still other aquatic vegetation that will need to be removed this fall with aquatic herbicides that prohibit irrigation for 72 hours.  I have done some research on this chemical and feel pretty comfortable I will be able to make a difference in controlling these weeds.

Tuesday we hosted the morning and evening league ladies league end of the season tournaments.  Friday we hosted the Clay County Pork Producers at the golf course.  There were 49 golfers that played nine holes of golf, ate a great meal provided by the CCPP, and enjoyed some social time as well.  Today we are hosting the season ending men’s league tournament.  The golf league season is coming to an end but there is still plenty of time to play golf with beautiful fall weather.

We have had three straight golf seasons with very poor weather.  The rainfall was the worst this Spring than the previous two years.  This weather has really impacted our revenue at the golf course.  Our season pass totals were the lowest they have ever been since the 18 hole golf course.  We need some nice weather moving into 2020.  I have been operating the grounds maintenance with one less staff member to attempt to help the budget we are currently operating.  When it rains there are no golfers but staff still needs to maintain the golf course.

This concludes another week at SMGC.  Please contact me with any comments, questions, or concerns so they can be addressed in a timely manner.  As soon as you let me know I am able to take your comments and move toward correcting the situation.  Last weeks comments I received were addressed within 24 hours.  Enjoy the remainder of your weekend.

8-18-19

Good Morning,

The past week was spent making a lot of repairs and adjustments to the irrigation system.  I went through about 32 valve boxes.  Some of these areas had bad valve diaphragms, lightning damage, or bad solenoids.  There were several valves that stuck on overnight as well.  These valves get debris that lodges under the valve diaphragm and it will not shut down and the water continues to flow through the sprinkler.  By the end of the week I completed almost every irrigation repair on the course.

I have been running the system at full capacity every night this past week.  The dry spots on a couple of greens are due to a broken irrigation head or poor performance by the head.  All of these sprinkler heads have been replaced.  There will continue to be more areas that need repair as I continue going through the course station by station.  Overall, the system is keeping up nicely with the dry conditions.

I have treated 1/3 of the irrigation pond for algae control.  The algae has been controlled on the north and west sides of the irrigation pond.  I will continue to work my way around the remainder of the pond this coming week.  The pond on #10 has also been treated and the algae has been totally removed.  This will be an ongoing process to try and control the remainder of the aquatic vegetation as we move into Fall.

The clubhouse parking lot was graded by the Street Division on Wednesday morning.  I had previously leveled some of the damaged areas Tuesday morning.  On Friday, they brought multiple loads of road gravel and covered almost the entire parking lot.  The thunderstorm last night had minimal impact on the lot.  I will continue to drag the parking lot weekly moving forward in the future.

I received the invoice for the lightning damage to one of our AC units.  They also sent me an estimate to replace the damaged unit.  I emailed this information to the insurance adjuster and will proceed once I have talked to this individual.

We have been very busy with our normal daily grounds maintenance schedules.  The golf course is in pretty nice shape as we head into our weekend.  Open golf was very busy on Friday and Saturday.  This morning we are hosting our second couple’s golf tournament of the season.  It should be a beautiful day for some golf.  Hopefully everyone enjoys their time on the course with their partner.

Lastly, we removed a damaged Ash tree next to the maintenance building entrance.  This tree was damaged from a previous wind storm.  The tree was cracked over two feet right down the middle of the tree trunk.  It was definitely a liability issue.  It was tough cutting it down since it was planted by my oldest daughter and I when she was in fifth grade.  We will start removing dead pine trees in the upcoming weeks.

8-13-19

A couple topics that were discussed at the golf board meeting were addressed this morning.

The first was the condition of the parking lot at the clubhouse.  I used the loader and dragged as much material as possible to the low spots by the cart sheds and along the west side of the clubhouse.  It is only a temporary fix since the cart traffic will eventually create these holes again.  I will continue to drag these areas on a weekly basis to help with the rough driving conditions.  The Street Division will be on site Wednesday morning to take the road grader over the entire parking lot.  These bad areas will be coned off so no vehicles can park and the grader can address the situation.

The parking lot condition has been a hot topic all year long.  The water table is so high in this area of town that the frost boils have never fully recovered from late Winter.  The Street Division has been on site many times trying to grade the parking lot and help alleviate the problems.  The soft spots have never recovered from the boils and it has been very difficult to maintain the entrance and nearing the cart sheds.  The entrance was filled with larger rocks and crushed concrete last week.  This has helped tremendously in this area.

The second topic was in regards to the air conditioning unit that was struck by lightning.  As mentioned last night I have called Hanson’s Plumbing & Heating multiple times in regards to this problem.  I just got off the phone again this morning with Lisa.  They will be emailing the information needed for the replacement and an invoice for work done previously.  I will forward this information to the adjustor and we will proceed forward.

Lastly, Following my job evaluation last week made me take a different look at the public perspective of my response to fire calls during daytime hours.  It prompted me to have a conversation with Chief John Conyn.  I will no longer be driving the SFD car and will also limit myself to any daytime hours covering medical shift.  My work commitment is first and foremost at the golf course.

As I mentioned, during the review, I have a daily journal that I keep on my Google Drive.  This journal documents day to day activities at the golf course.  Since we changed payroll software, I started recording my hours at the golf course and fire station on Google Drive.  I am going to share this document with Amanda in case you have questions moving forward.

Please get in touch with me when there are concerns, questions, or comments that need to be addressed.  I always try and deal with them as quickly as possible.  I try to provide as much information as possible in the weekly updates.  If there is a question that arises I am more than happy to take a phone call or respond to an email.

8-11-19

Good Morning,

Another week has passed us by rather quickly.  The golf course was busy with our normal weeknight golf leagues, 72 golfers in the Veteran’s tournament on Saturday, and 31 athletes this morning for the Special Olympics.  Yesterday was a great day to help raise money for our veterans and the weather was perfect.  Today is a special day to be able to participate in the Unified Golf event.  We are scheduled to host the Lakes Area Seniors in the morning, but it looks like strong thunderstorms.

The warm and dry weather has really started to turn the golf course a brownish hue in the non irrigated areas.  There are also some annual dry spots in fairways, greens, and tees that are always an issue.  The main reason for a lot of these areas is poor sprinkler head coverage.  The other reason would be issues with the valve on that particular station.

I have been working on the irrigation system all week.  There are several stations that have electrical issues from a lightning strike during a past storm.  One of the valve boxes looked like it simply exploded from the lightning.  This fries the solenoid and the decoder which are both necessary to run each irrigation station.

There are also valves that get a small rock or other debris caught in the diaphragm which allows the water to continuously pass through the valve and into the irrigation head.  This is particularly obvious in #14 fairway where the first sand trap is completely full of water from a leaking head.

Also, there was a section of pipe on #16 tee that broke.  When the station was programmed to run the broken pipe would not allow the water to get to the sprinkler head but it did allow the water pressure to fill the pipe with mud which has now made it impossible to run this station.  We are going to use a trencher from SMU on Monday to cut in a new line for these tees.

I started the irrigation system last night around 5:30 PM.  This was done in order to apply more irrigation time to the fairway stations.  It takes over 12 hours to irrigate the golf course at 100%.  Since there was minimal golf traffic and the temperature was much warmer than predicted I decided to start the system early.  I did receive a couple of phone calls inquiring why I was watering and how were people supposed to play golf?  It was one irrigation station at a time, per hole, and with a run time of 15 minutes.

The street division was on site to work on our parking lot this past week.  They hauled some 2″ rock to the north entrance of the clubhouse parking lot.  This material was packed into place and should eliminate the very soupy entrance to the golf course.  I guess we will see what will happen after all the rain tomorrow.

I treated the west end of the irrigation pond for algae on Wednesday.  This is a copper sulfate crystal application.  It kills algae by binding to it, which damages the algae cells, causing them to leak and die. Copper sulfate is highly soluble in water, and copper is a natural, essential mineral. Too much copper is toxic to plants because it prevents photosynthesis.  I will continue to work on the algae control of this pond in the coming week.

8-4-19

What a beautiful week weather wise.  This could be the first time we have gone had near perfect golf conditions for a seven day stretch.  The wind has been minimal, plenty of sunshine, and the temperatures have been pleasant.  It has all added up to a very busy week at the golf course with leagues, golf outings, and open golf.

We have been short staffed on the golf course grounds crew and will continue to be until the end of next week.  Everyone has pitched in and maintained a very nice golf course for everyone to enjoy.  This is a busy month at the muni filled with lots of golf events and closes out with the end of the year league tournaments.  Then we prepare ourselves for the Clay County Fair.  Is that even possible?

This upcoming week will include spraying greens with a fungicide and foliar fertilizer application.  I will also start working on spraying herbicide in some of the areas where clover and other broadleaf weeds are present.  Some of the low areas have started to finally dry up and I will be able to spray.  One of these areas will include along the south property line of Stoneybrook.

The irrigation pond will also be treated with copper sulphate to control the algae that is present.  The copper sulphate will be applied as a granular and will remove the algae in a couple days.  This process will take me a few days to complete.  I can only treat part of the pond every couple of days.  If too much algae is killed at once it will remove too much oxygen from the water and possibly create a fish kill.  Over the next two weeks the majority of the algae will be removed from both ponds.

Our parking lots have been a continuous problem all year.  The street division was on site late this past week to do as much work as possible on both lots.  They will add some larger rock to the entry of the clubhouse parking lot where we still have cones set up.  We will continue to do everything we can to keep the parking lot presentable.  The water table is so high it makes it very difficult.