Exploring an alternative source

In November, Pinter and Associates Ltd. (geotechnical engineers) were asked conduct a geological study as to whether there was evidence of a possible alternative water source available for irrigating the golf course. The intention is to reduce or, if possible, eliminate the amount of potable water (15,000,000 gallons per year) used to irrigate. The process to date has consisted of drilling three two inch boreholes known as test wells. The wells were bored down to a depth of approximately 40 feet and samples were taken every five feet to be brought back to the lab for analysis.  On Monday December 5th, Pinter and Associates Ltd. returned to further analyse and sample the monitoring wells.  Over the next few weeks they will be generating a report of their findings along with a recommendation as to whether or not it is viable to proceed with the next steps in attempting to extract ground water for the purpose of irrigating the golf course.

Boring test well

Removing soil sample for analysis

Installing test well

Blowing Snow

Typically, seeing a headline as this would mean greens are being cleared and golf is shortly around the corner. However, this winter has not brought average weather and therefore this is not your typical snow blowing.  Having roughly only an inch of snow in some areas on the greens and others that are bare right down to the tarp, we figured we would try an experiment to produce our own snow in order to increase the insulation value. Typically blown snow becomes quite hard packed and in some cases actually forms a bond to the turf or the tarp which is undesireable, however, with the temperature soaring to plus six last Tuesday the result by Thursday was a very hard "crust" layer on top of the snow.  By having the crust on top, we decided this may be a good time to test this theory as the snow blown onto the green would just stay on top of the crust and not form any sort of bond.  On Thursday we hauled five loads of snow from the local hockey rink which was spread out around the green surround and a snow blower was used to blow the snow onto the desired areas.  We will be monitoring conditions such as snow compaction, bonds created with existing snow, bonds created with the tarps, and the insulation value that was created. Determining the insulation value will be done by monitoring crown temperatures under the area where the snow was blown versus and area where it was not.