Update on maintenance shop

We were ready to paint the new floor early in the week delayed until today because the high fume content of the paint.  This will give the weekend for it to dry out and help the fumes dissipate throughout the weekend.  The staff had to do some major cleaning of the floor using a concrete cleaner.  Skip and Harry spent the morning putting down the light gray epoxy paint on the floor.  Should be dry enough after this weekend to start getting the shop put back together and the rest of our organizing completed. 

Mechanic Harry and Asst. Skip spreading on the epoxy paint.  Using some breathing apparatus to reduce fumes, vapors which are very strong with this paint.  What a difference the new painted floor vs the old, dirty floor.



The new floor looking toward the lift.

Looks great!

Equipment maintenance shop improvement

Former Superintendent Scott was instrumental in changing the overall appearance of the maintenance facility in 2006 with a general clean up of the complete facility.  The complete replacement of an aged fleet of
equipment and a general cleaning has provided us with a better looking and organized maintenance facility. 

After a few years of accumulating stuff(junk) in the main mechanical repair area plus a floor that is soiled with many years of grease and oil, its time for an overhaul in the most important area of our facility.  The repair and parts area is not large by facility standards, 22'x40'.  Our parts and supplies are stocked in a separate parts room but along the walls in wooden pigeon holed shelving.  This reduces the space in our maintenance area that is already limited and makes it difficult to determine the supplies that we have on hand.   

We plan to remove everything from the shop, all benches, desks and storage bins, clean and repaint the walls, acid wash the floor, patch the cracks and holes in the concrete and epoxy paint the floor a light gray which will sharpen and enhance this most important work area.  The epoxy paint will be light reflective and will be much easier to keep clean.  Shelving to hold parts and supplies will be streamlined and improved.  I will post additional pictures of the improvements as we move forward.

Benches have been removed out of the center background and right side where our parts storage shelf was located.
The equipment lift is the red unit with the cross bars in the middle.  It is permanently set in place.

This is the view from the other side looking toward the reel grinder in the back ground and to the right is the bedknife grinder.

Indoor winter maintenance projects

The bitter temperatures of early week and the subsequent freezing rain later in the week pushed our staff into the maintenance facility this week.  We have some maintenance work that requires inside duty and this was the perfect time to get some of it completed.  Below are some pictures of our tees markers and tee signage that are being cleaned and spruced up for next season.

Tom is sanding the old stain off of the wooden tee markers.  We are preparing well over 125 with some being back ups for the season.

Assistant Mike is putting a stain on the freshly sanded markers.  The markers are then clear coated and the old electrical tape is removed which you can see is wrapped around each marker designating the appropriate teeing ground.  New tape is wrapped in place and the markers are ready for next season.   In the middle of the season, a touch up clearcoat is done to keep the markers looking nice for our members and guests through the rest of the year.

Every few years, the hole signs are removed and freshly painted.

Jason is using a grinding wheel to remove the paint from the raised letters exposing the hole number, name, teeing ground and its yardage. The staff then have to hand paint the circle which designates the three teeing grounds and their course rated yardage.     

The finished product after removing the paint from the letter.  We still have to paint the small circled area for the appropriate teeing ground.







Russ is pulling apart ball washers, cleaning and making sure the brushes are in good shape.  



Add-on furnace update

The grounds maintenance heating bill for our shop over the period of mid-February thru mid-March was
$ 167 versus an average since 2006 of $ 764.

Our total natural gas cost through the 4 months has been $ 985. versus an average of $ 4250 since 2006.
The wood burner unit paid for itself and we saved about $ 1200-1300 in cash flow this year.   

Add on furnace update

Our average heat bill for the mid-December/mid January period has averaged $ 1332 over the last 3-4 years. Our bill has just arrived for the same period this year and our total cost is
$ 322.00.

A $1000 saving on this month's bill and it was extremely cold the last 15-17 days of the period. The unit has paid for itself in the first two months of its use.

Add-on wood burning stove update

Our first Laclede Gas bill is in for the mid-November/mid-December period. We've saved around $ 600 from the past few years average to this years bill for the same period. Wood burner was only operational from around December 3rd.

Wood burning add-on furnace for maintenance building

With over 1,000 trees covering the playing area of our golf course and a few hundred more around the perimeter of the driving range, there will be an abundance of wood from trees that are removed each season. With this supply of wood, it only makes sense to utilize this resource for a potential heat source and not to send it off property and pay for the dumpster.

We have a large Dayton heater with dual forced air blowers which uses natural gas to heat the equipment garage area of our maintenance building. We also have a smaller forced air gas heater for our small office, break room, restroom and chemical storage area. The main mechanic shop area has a smaller single fan gas heater as well.

We purchased a 115,000 BTU add-on wood burning furnace to heat our main shop area.


Link to the company where we purchased the unit with specifications.

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_1036726_1036726





Picture of unit in place in the shop.

We placed the add-on heating unit in a central location of the equipment storage area along the back wall. We ran 2 flexible 8" heat ducts to a couple of different sections of the building to assist in moving the heat to where it is needed. We are able to keep the area in the 55-60 degree range which is fine for our shop area. We have about $ 1,800 in the unit and the duct work. The unit will pay for itself this winter and we should see some additional savings of $1-2,000 this season. Our heat bill runs approximately $4.5-5,000 a season for the entire maintenance facility.

The picture below shows the 8" flexible duct pipe that we ran through the rafters to help distribute the heat to other sections of the building.

We placed a 6 mil piece of plastic across the entire shop area to reduce the amount of area that we want to heat on a regular basis. The area in the back does retain some temperature so it is warmer than the outside and does reduce wear and tear of our batteries on the equipment that is stored in this section of the shop. We can also pull the liner back to allow eat to enter this area when the crew is forced inside due to extreme weather conditions. The equipment that we use in the winter is stored in the back as well which will reduce heat loss when we open doors to go out and complete our work for the day.

Plastic liner(background) between the heated area and reduced heat section of the shop.