Course Update 8/31/20

 Early last week we turned on the irrigation well that's located near the property line on the right side of Orchard 5 in the ornamental grass bed, only to discover it had a sizable leak.  It hasn't been needed in at least five years but the dry conditions and low lake level has us concerned we would run out of water if the weather pattern continued.  How quickly things changed given the four inches of rain that came at the end of last week and refilled the lake. The well is approximately 400 feet deep and will provide 100 gallons per minute of water, or 144,000 gallons per day.  That's around one third of the total water used for irrigating per night, but it will keep the lake level from getting critically low.

Here's the section of pipe cut out of the line along with the broken fittings that were leaking.  There were two old valves that didn't work and a dead-ended tee that didn't go anywhere in the section of pipe removed.

The good end of the existing line is being beveled to accept the new pipe and fittings.  We also installed a new gate valve on the well casing that will allow us to stop the flow of water if needed.

Down to fitting the last piece of pipe between the two black couplers then backfilling the hole.  We may not need the well this year, but it's reassuring to know it's been fixed properly and can help us in the future.

Course Update 8/29/20

 Thursday night we received 1.2" of rain, then an additional 2.87" of heavy rain came yesterday afternoon and throughout the night, bringing our total to 4.07" in the past 48 hours.  We were on track to have another below-average month of precipitation and needed some rain, but this is beyond excessive.  The storms washed out the bunkers both days, caused some tree damage, and left a lot of leaves and other debris for us to clean up.  It was also necessary to be Cart Path Only today, which last occurred 98 days ago on May 22.  That's the longest stretch I can remember going back to 2016.

Fortunately only a few trees came down in the storm, but there were a lot of branches and leaves that had to be cleaned up.

All the bunkers were washed out from the storm and a few will need to be pumped out.  We started repairing the greenside bunkers today and should be completed in a couple days.

The main irrigation lake below the Clubhouse had been drawn down a couple feet over the past several months, but it only took two days of rain to have it overflowing.