Good Morning,
Another week is in the books at The Muni. There were a lot of golfers each day enjoying sunshine and beautiful golf weather. Our season pass totals are behind normal as are many of our revenue line items. All things COVID 19 considered, I think things are going about as well as we could expect during this difficult time. The vast majority of customers are understanding and have been very cordial. You always get a couple of “special souls” who leave you scratching your head, but my hat’s off to the staff and our golfing community.
The golf course maintenance staff is operating with less employees so far to start the season and the clubhouse is functioning with a bit more staff than normal. The maintenance work has been kept to a minimum with the majority of focus on the irrigation system. The clubhouse staff takes an extra set of hands to accommodate the golfers and keep everything sanitized properly. Again, I am very thankful to the staff for their hard work and going above and beyond.
I sent out an email midweek touching on some of the irrigation challenges we have been facing that forced me to operate the irrigation system in manual mode. With the second pump no longer in operation I was still able to get the system primed and operate at 50%. I irrigated greens and tees during the afternoon hours and started on a couple holes of fairway stations at the same time. Then I went back through the green and tee stations overnight and continued to cover the remainder of the fairway stations. Twenty one hours later the course irrigation was completed.
The damaged motor, on the lag pump, was removed from the irrigation line on Saturday and a new transducer was installed in the control panel. The transducer is what reads the pressure setting and reports it to the computer. This allows the pumps to run in automatic mode. The power panel was able to be wired from the bottom of the control panel and is now functioning properly. The top of the wiring board had a bad solder connection. I left the course mid afternoon on Saturday and returned in the evening to irrigate overnight.
We have completed a lot of irrigation repairs the past several weeks in preparation for the installation of new hardware in the field. We still have a handful of small repairs to make in the valve boxes that have minimal impact on operations. The contractor will be here Tuesday morning to start installing the new components in every valve box. Hopefully we will have progressed with our pumphouse problems as well.
Some days never go the way we would like them to in this crazy world. The COVID 19 only enhances all those issues for each one of us. At the end of the day a person can only push forward as much as time permits and pick back up the following day. Keep yourselves safe in “the year of ‘Rona!” We will succeed.
Enjoy the sunshine and keep on moving forward golf friends!
Spencer Municipal Golf Course 