August 20, 2016

On Saturday morning, August 14, so far the hottest day of 2016, the water stopped.

At first I thought maybe a pipe blew, or hopefully, there was a brief power outage. But it wasn’t. The electronic controls in the pump station that control the amperage to the pumps “fatally “short circuited.  The pumps still worked, yet we had to bypass the control system and run the entire system manually in order to maintain correct pressures and flow. Without getting technical and/or complicated, a person had to be here to run the pumps and run the irrigation heads at the same time to match the pumps output. Not an easy task.

To accomplish this, I stayed long into the evening running pumps, controllers, and heads to water the greens and tees. In the morning, the assistants irrigated fairways the best they could, yet with play, mowing, and needed fungicide applications, it was not foolproof.

To add to our challenges (the heat wave and pumps), a leak occurred on the 10” main, which caused us to shut down six holes for approximately ten hours on Monday. After this was repaired, another leak occurred on the same main, and the same holes were shut down Friday for that repair. This same main had developed a leak a week before the pump control went down – three leaks in 10 days. This is a matter of the piping system’s age – 30 years . We also had a leak on a 2” pipe and several heads on the course failed and required replacement.

As to the pumping control, the replacement part was found on Monday and shipped overnight from Wisconsin to our irrigation contractor outside of Philadelphia. Their pump technician arrived at approximately at 3:30pm Wednesday afternoon, and it took until 10pm to have it installed, calibrated, the compatibility bugs worked out, and running.  

Between the pump station not working as it should, two leaks in the main, and the continued above 90 degree temperatures, it was a nightmare week, and fortunately, we only got a few nicks here and there.

Re this year’s heat wave, http://www.nj.com/weather/index.ssf/2016/08/records_fall_like_sweat_as_heat_wave_continues_grip_on_nj.html