Time to get Dirty!

 

 

Back in the summer of 2013 we needed to comply with the new FCC narrow banding regulations.  Our irrigation system at that time was using wide band frequencies to communicate from our walkie talkies and our irrigation computer at our shop to the irrigation satellites you see in the picture above.  Well with the narrow banding we had to upgrade several components on our system.  We needed to have our FCC licence renewed, walkie talkies re-programmed, get a new base station at our shop and replace a card in each of the satellites.  Things were OK for a while until late last year we were having problems communicating with two of our satellites.  The satellites to the left of 4 green and left of 15 fairway were not always running when we needed them to run.  The same thing was occurring this year as well and with all the rain we have been having it was not a big issue.  Now that we are going into summer and we need these to be a bit more dependable we purchased some Yagi antennas to help receive the signal at the satellite.  Above you can see the guys starting to dig the hole and trench to the satellite for the new antenna.

 

 

Here is the new antenna in place.  After setting the post with the new antenna we point it in the direction to our shop and all that is left is to back fill.  I know it's not the most attractive thing to see on the golf course but it is necessary that the satellites are receiving the signals to make sure the irrigation system is running properly.

 

 

 

This week we also decided to tackle the wet area to the front right of the pond on hole 4.  I already had a pretty good idea what the problem maybe and I was correct.  As you can see the the left of the red arrow is a root mass from the maple trees to the right of the drain line.  It was about 6 feet long and filled the 4 inch drain pipe.

 

 

When we pulled out the root mass from the pipe and a tremendous amount of water continued to pour out of the pipe that was backed up since early spring.  After pondering over the best remedy for this problem we decided to go ahead and dig a new drain line, install a catch basin so we can keep an eye on this in the future and run new solid 4 inch N12 drainage pipe 100 feet to the pond which will not let the root mass enter the pipe in the future.

 

 

What a muddy mess this turned out to be.  Here is the start of the new pipe being installed.  All joints are ducted taped to make sure they do not come apart.