Friday, March 20, 2009

Tee Renovation

A great deal progress has been made this past week with our tee renovation work.

Our laser level contractor was able to come out on Monday afternoon till and laser both tees on #10 and the 7th blue tee in a couple of hours.
Before his work began, the guys had to remove the sod from 7 tee and do some additional work in preparation for the leveling operation.
As you can see, the sod was removed and laid off to the side of the tee. Tom is cleaning some edges and Jason is using our lightweight tiller to break up the surface. Lady is doing her usual job of supervision.













Jason continuing to till and Tom clearing out an edge for the sod.















Yes, Jason is still tilling. A small unit and three shots taken pretty close to one another. We formed a straight line down the right side of the tee to help staff with tee placement and we cut out a couple of more yards of turf to give a far right tee placement. We will have to prune a couple of limbs off of the oak in the right foreground.















Tom is clearing out the entrance to the tee. He is trying to soften the entrance to make it easier to enter the tee and help the sod survive the foot traffic. There is a large amount of water that comes from the yard behind the tee which runs down the walk path creating ruts and washes our mulch down the hill. We need to install a drain before the tee opens to help reduce the amount of water that is on the surface causing this damage.















The guys located a quick coupler which had been overgrown with zoysia/bermuda in the foreground which we can hook up a hose to help with any localized dry areas on the tee. The sprinkler head in the background is used to water the tee below but is not level. The staff dug up the head and leveled it. This should help provide better coverage on the tee and help reduce the amount of water that had been landing on the rear section of the 7th white tee.













Schaeffer Meyer personnel using a tractor roto-tiller to loosen the top surface of the tee before leveling.












Another view of the tilling unit at work.















The picture above shows the laser leveling operation in action. The right side of the picture is the tri-pod holding the two plane leveling unit. Jerry Meyer sets the percentage slope from side to side and forward to backward. This is usually set at about 1%. For example; A 1% fall in a 100' tee would be 1'. This tee is only 25' square so the slope is only 2.5". Normally tees are leveled front to back and usually away from the walk on and off area so members are not walking through the area where the tee is draining. This tee was set to drain to the left and sloped slightly from back to front. Golf course architecture suggests that tees built on a downhill slope should be built with a slight downhill grade.

There are 5 pieces of equipment involved in the laser operation. The laser on the tri-pod which sends out the signal. A receiver that attaches on a pole to the box blade. This receiver has an up and down arrow and a even line which tells the operator sitting on the tractor how close to grade the tee is becoming as he moves around the surface. There is a unit sitting by the operator which allows for manual overriding of the system and an electrical sensor unit that attaches to the tractor's hydraulic system. This unit raises and lowers the box blade based upon the information that Jerry placed in the laser unit. As the tractor continues to go around in circles, the box blade unit will continue to cut and fill until the surface has met the percentages in slope that have been requested.












The leveling box blade in action.












Jerry is beginning to do his work on the 7th tee box.














Mike and Jason running wire to the newly trenched head at the front corner of #10 white tee. The head was originally two foot higher at the front left corner of the tie wall.












Lady is in charge again. Now some might say is that all she does. She can't lay sod so I guess in the end that is all she does when we are stopped at a project. The last few days, she has taken some side trips down to the lakes to chase a few noisy geese. Tom, Jason and Russell laying the zoysia on the new forward #10 blue tee. I'm sorry for not having finished pictures of the laser leveled tee. I thought I had taken some but must have gotten out of sequence with all the work that was taking place.













A view at the new tee in front of the existing #10 blue tee. The sod on the surround of the tee is fescue that is just coming out of dormancy. It is grown out in the O'Fallon, Missouri area which has had more frost and cooler temperatures than Glen Echo at this time of year.



Looking from above the same tee.
We still have some sod to lay on the both the tee surface and the surround to the #10 white tee.
I hope to have pictures of the 7th and 10th white tee in the next few days.

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