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Golf Course News Magazine - Guidelines help beat effluent odds Golf Course News

Considering that the irrigation system for a golf course is only renovated every 20-25 years, the irrigation design profession is a discipline that golf club personnel rarely encounters. In consideration of this fact, the following outline is a summary of the key benefits that have made installation management services a standard in the industry.

Construction Experience - With exception of our larger architectural clients, Irrigation Services Group, Inc. is involved with more construction projects in one year than any other discipline in the industry. This brings to our clients an exceptional understanding of the construction process. Furthermore, the President of Irrigation Services Group, Inc. has spent his 25 years in and around the irrigation industry and has excelled in the areas of design, materials distribution and as an irrigation contractor. He brings with him this advanced knowledge for the benefit of each client.

Protecting Your Investment - The location of sprinkles or staking should not be taken lightly. It differs drastically from home or commercial irrigation. It is one of, if not the most important turf management tool used in maintaining a golf course property. Furthermore, the extensive use of fertigation and the new turf expectations of recent years has made golf course irrigation even more critical. For this reason, industry professionals have found that irrigation staking, in the hands of anyone other than the design firm, will result in an approach to the staking that is plagued with a general lack of understanding of the critical nature of the interface between each sprinkler placement and/or the application of an irrigation pattern. The result is a careless corruption of the specified pattern and the costly addition of sprinklers. Historically, these additional sprinklers have had more of an effect on the overall cost of the system than any real benefit to the system's performance. In most cases, these additional sprinklers do little to overcome the deficiencies of the poor remaining pattern and merely contributed to additional water use that many clubs do not have to spare. In addition, a poor pattern can greatly degrade the capabilities of the new computer control system as an effective water management tool. As a testament to the extent of this problem, we spend a great deal of our professional careers working with existing clubs to overcome these problems. In addition to poor hydraulic performance and a system's overall age, poor coverage is the leading cause of an irrigation renovation.

In response to this problem and the ever increasing pressure to reduce water use for golf course irrigation, Irrigation Services Group, Inc. has developed a highly specialized method of providing efficient irrigation coverage within our designs. More importantly, our professional staff can consistently transfer this irrigation coverage to the full scale of the golf course property. This expertise gives our clients the assurance that only necessary sprinkler locations are provided. Also, you have the assurance that each location is provided in a pattern that will be consistent with the original design intent and the resulting water use projections. In almost all cases, we can cover more turf, more efficiently, while using far less water than the existing system. These water use comparisons stand as proof of the efficiency of our design and staking expertise. This method has been successfully used and proven, time and again, for hundreds of golf courses worldwide.

Good Insurance for the Consistent Implementation of the Design in the Field - Much effort goes into preparing an irrigation design. Irrigation Services Group, Inc. works closely with the architect and golf course personnel to achieve a design that will realize our client's expectations. Elements such as architectural features, soil types, budgets, water supply availability, etc. are carefully considered during the preparation of the irrigation design. From this process, the designer, architect, client and their staff have achieved a comfort level with the parameters of the design. The irrigation design documents will represent the collective input and preferences of all parties and will be the basis of everyone's expectations of the final product. To maintain consistency of these expectations, all key elements of the design must be implemented consistently in the field during the installation. Failure to do so will result in the original design intent being indiscernible. Too many times club owners have been left with little improvement over the system they paid good money to replace.

Professional Staking is Cost Effective - A typical golf hole will require an average of 50 sprinkler locations. An inconsistently staked sprinkler pattern will result in the erroneous addition of sprinklers to compensate for this poor pattern. In doing this, it only requires the cost of 1 additional sprinkler, per hole, to far exceed our fees for professional staking services. Two sprinklers will nearly reach the total fees for our entire service package.

Advanced GIS technology to Insure the Integrity of the Irrigation System - In an effort to protect the integrity of our staking or flag location, all relative golf course features and sprinkler location are recorded with the use of a Global Imaging System or GIS unit. In performing this effort, we are able to protect our client by rejecting charges for additional sprinklers that have been added by others without our authorization.