Mainline Break on 8 Fairway

sod ripple from mainline break

 When we came into work on Thursday morning we were greeted by this beautiful site 100 yards off the tee in 8 fairway.  We are very lucky to have a good automated irrigation system at the golf course, the only problem is when something breaks it usually does it in dramatic fashion.  This leak was caused by a junction point where our mainline feeds a 2" lateral line, the saddle that was used to supply water to the 2" lateral failed. 


hole created when mainline broke on 8 fairway

 As you can see by the second picture there was a lot of water flowing from this pipe.  The irrigation system was operating at 120 psi at the time of the break, the 6" mainline has the potential of having 1,000 gallons per minute flow at that pressure. We did not have to do very much digging at all to repair this pipe, the hole you see was completely dug by the water .  The hole was large enough to fit an entire golf cart in.  One positive to this break is that all the water from the pipe flowed directly back into our main irrigation pond on 8 so no water was lost due to this problem.