We are not alone

Below is a post from the Oakland Hills Country Club grounds blog, they are located in the suburbs of Detroit and are a top 20 Club in the nation.  Just one example that we are not alone in our fight to keep turf alive in very tough conditions:

Oakland Hills Country Club - Turfgrass Maintenance

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Winter Update and Status Posted: 27 Feb 2014 12:13 PM PST We have been monitoring the condition of the greens on both courses. The unprecedented weather has caused concern throughout SE Michigan. The extreme cold and ice formation is dangerous to turf in all areas but especially on greens. We have been removing snow and ice where appropriate, covering the more at risk greens with permeable covers and generally worrying about the surviveability of the turf in these conditions. Dr. Kevin Frank from MSU was here today to look at several greens. It is too early to know if there is any turf loss or the extent of loss if it occurs. We will keep you informed as conditions permit. Dr. Kevin Frank on #1 green North 

Today's projects

It looks like more snow in the forecast for this weekend.  I think the next few days will be the last time we will be able to get anything accomplished outside before spring hits because it's hard for us to get around the course when there is significant snow on the ground.  There were a few more trees that I wanted to take down this week before the snow hits, we will also be grinding all the stumps and cleaning up the the shavings tomorrow.  This will put us in a good position when spring decides to come.

Removing the Spruce tree on the front, left corner of 17 green.  We also removed the 1/2 of a Spruce tree near 16 fairway - it was damaged in a storm last year.

 

 

Jim Otley (Equipment Manager) has been busy the last few days replacing the reels on our fairway mowers.  This is the last major repair to be done before spring.

Todd Achten (Facilities Manager) came over to our shop to repair our broken heater.

 

 

Winter damage

I guess it's not really news anymore, everyone is used to seeing and hearing about it, in case you haven't heard - the course had moderate flooding this past weekend.  I don't want to make a huge deal out of this every time we flood, but in the culture of full disclosure and communication - this is the 4th flood we have had in 10 months, all of them being in the top 50 floods for Findlay:

April - 17th

July - 34th

December - 8th

February - 44th

 

18 Fairway

Behind 18 green

We will be back to work with the clean-up efforts as soon as the ice melts away.

 

 

This winter has been tough on our greens.  This is a patch on 7 green, patches of turf did not make it through the winter.  Most of the greens look great as of now.  Greens 1, 7 and 12 look a little rough.  7 green lost turf just from the stresses of winter, 1 green lost turf due to snow mold and 12 is browned in areas due to the extreme cold temps we saw.

12 greens looks bad, but as of now I don't see dead turf.  You can see that portions of the green are brown.  This is exactly the areas that we had to add snow to the green a few weeks back.  The green areas are spots that had enough snow cover to insulate the greens from the cold temps, the brown areas are spots that had little snow cover and the tips of the grass blades died.  The turf is still green under the brown tips.  This is a good sign that the plant will make it through winter and grow out of the damage in spring.  A few other greens have similar symptoms, not near as extensive as 12 though.  Overall we are looking fairly good as of now - no major turf loses - just areas that will have to be "babied" as we go into spring.  We have about 30 more days of this cold/stressful weather, let's hope we can get through the remainder of it with no further damage.

 

 

 

 

Pictures

Here are some more pictures of the snow removal process.  We will continue to remove snow on Saturday morning.

Clearing off 6

This is 13 just cleared off, it has 1/2 inch of ice built up on it.

This is 12 green, we cleared the snow yesterday, it had a full day to melt off.

Snow removal from greens

I took a tour of the course today to evaluate the conditions underneath the snow.  The few areas that I uncovered on the fairways are looking good so far.  When you have extended periods of snow cover, the risk for "snow mold" is high.  We sprayed a preventive application for this in November and so far we have not had a break through in the small areas I sampled.

The fairways looked good when uncovered.

The greens on the other hand have a significant layer of ice built up underneath the snow.  poa annua can live around 60 days under ice cover, we are currently at 40 days of ice cover

Therefore we made the decision today to uncover all the greens (or as many as we can).  In doing this, we hope the temperatures are warm enough to melt the ice layer that has built up.  We are also allowing the melted snow a place to escape and run off.  If we did not uncover the greens the snow would continue to melt, the water would move down to the current ice layer and freeze - creating an even thicker layer of ice that would last most likely for the next 3 weeks.

This method is not "guaranteed"  I have seen clubs remove snow and end up worse off than if they hadn't.  There is no scientific trigger that says if you have "this" and it's "this" temp, than you should do "this"  Rather is becomes a feel thing for the Superintendent and doing what they think is best at any point in time.  At certain times snow cover is a good thing, it acts as an insulator and protects the crown of the plant.  My feeling now is that we have too much ice and can't afford more to build up, therefore we are taking the risk of removing the snow.  I am confident this our best option in a challenging winter.

 

 

Gas bill savings

Believe it or not, we have been saving a significant amount on our gas heat bill this winter compared to last winter (at the maintenance shop).  How is that possible, with near record lows for the last 2 months?  If you remember last winter, the Grounds staff installed an adequate ceiling in our shop and added insulation.

Compared to past years, we are saving around $500 a month on our heat bill during the winter months.  When we did the project last winter, I stated in my posts that these types of projects would be worth the cost because of future energy savings.  One comment I heard was "That's good and all, but how long is the payback period and is it worth the time and expense?"  The payback period was 1 year.  I can't wait to see the low heating bills on a "normal" winter.

See my "Rainy day project" post from November 2012 under the Maintenance Building label.

Clubhouse boiler project

The clubhouse hot water tanks along with all the pipes surrounding them have recently been starting to leak (Chad's office has been wet a few times) .  Yesterday, Todd Achten, our clubhouse maintenance supervisor; along with Adam Bateson and Eric Lowery from the Grounds staff started replacing our hot water tanks and the copper plumbing around the boilers.  The guys started at 2:00pm after the Club shut down on Sunday and worked until midnight.  The have also been hard at work all day today completing this project.

Eric cutting copper pipe to size.

Todd and Adam installing the tanks and pipe.

Project almost complete - it looks great.

This project had to be done while the Club was closed because in doing this, we had to shut off the hot water.  This is why the guys worked late into the night on Sunday and all day Monday.  We were able to save the club $6,000 in capital funds vs. using a contractor to perform the work.

David Brim was caught giving the bag room a makeover.