Irrigation

Last week our irrigation system decided to go haywire and made for a frustrating few days for us, and probably for some of you. Early last week a storm came through with a lot of lighting and knocked out about half of the satellites on the course. The satellites are the green boxes that you see on every hole that control our irrigation. Now, the irrigation system uses electricity to tell the heads when to turn on and off, so when lighting hits too close, it can jump onto some of the irrigation wires and wreak all sorts of havoc. When this happens, fuses blow, boards get fried and general irrigation chaos ensues, which is why there were heads popping on last week for no reason. If you got wet because one of these heads came on, I'm very sorry. The problem is, we needed to have power on to the system to trouble shoot and fix it, but when the power is on to the system, anything, anywhere on the course can run, which is exactly what happened. On top of all that, and unrelated to the lightning, we had a bad power splice, which affects the voltage that runs to each box which in turn makes the boxes malfunction. The good news is, we have been through the system and have it back up in working order. Now, we just need to dodge lightning for a while.

Inside of a satellite. There are a lot of things that can go bad in there. 

Bad splice. 

Repaired splice. 

Speaking of lightning, our lightning alert system is down until next week because the transponder that sends the signal to the boxes to sound the alarm wasn't working. So, we sent it in to get repaired. It should be back in by Tuesday and we can have it installed and working the same day. Just know that when you're on the course you won't hear the siren even if there is lightning in the area, so please keep an eye on the sky and if you see lightning head for cover. 

Yesterday, we took advantage of the rain and sprayed some wetting agent on the fairway spots that always dry out and wilt. Wetting agent needs to be watered in, otherwise it will sit on the leaf and burn the plant, so when it rains we like to take advantage of it and put some wetting agent down. The wetting agent retains moisture in the soil so that it is available for the plant. We sprayed it at a rate that will give us 30 days of control, and save us from a lot of hand watering in the areas where we sprayed it. So, if you wondered why we were spraying in the driving rain, it's not because we enjoy doing it (it's a pretty terrible time actually) it's because we get great results out of the wetting agent when we do it that way.

Ian