Pump house repair, again.

Last week we discovered a leak just outside our pump house, to our surprise it was more than just a leak.  Our pump house has a steel pipe that comes out of the pump, angels down, and attaches to a 12" PVC mainline for the irrigation system (Z pipe).  When we dug up the junction between the steel and the PVC we found a hole lot of corrosion.  So much corrosion that we were able to easily stick a screwdriver into the steel pipe.  We are lucky that Landscapes Unlimited, the company that owns the Broadlands, is one of the best irrigation companies in the business, and that they were working in town at Columbine Country Club.  LUI came up and made our pump house repair look very easy, even though it was a very big job.

screwdriver in 1/4" thick 12" steel pipe

Once we were able to get the steel pipe out of the ground we found a couple of holes, and multiple areas that were very close to becoming holes.

hole in steel Z pipe

pitting in Z pipe

grove in pipe

LUI decided to replace the entire steel pipe with a section of HDPE(high-density polyethylene) pipe.  HDPE pipe is beginning to replace PVC in the irrigation world due to its versatility, strength, and ease of use. 

New HDPE pipe installed

view of flange on new HDPE pipe

HDPE pipe running out of pump house into thrust block

 We were able to pressure up the pump house yesterday morning and begin to water the course again.  I would like to thank everyone involved from Landscapes Unlimited and my crew for working together and making our 'major' problem look like a small problem.

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.