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Golf
Course Grounds
Irrigation Leaks through old
irrigation system
Winter 2008
The 2008 year experienced record
setting rainfall at the Lake of the Ozarks. The golf course had areas
that were saturated (muddy) throughout the year. In late winter 2008,
actually January 2009, Alex began doing some excavation work to repair old
drainage lines and install some new drainage. He noticed that some of
the areas, especially around #9 tee, continued to have water running long
after we had had any precipitation.
On a hunch, Alex visited with Gene
McGuire, who has been on our grounds crew since day 1, and inquired about
the routing of our old, abandoned irrigation system. The short
version of this story is that for some time we have apparently had water
leaking from the lake into the pipes of the old irrigation system and
gravity feeding its way across #1, 4, and 9 to the lowest areas. Alex
thinks it probably started last year when the heavy rains caused scouring in
the lake as flooding water rushed through.
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The picture above shows the approximate layout of our original
irrigation system. (Click the picture for larger version).
Notice where the lines are located under the new section of the
lake, and how they move up the right side of #4 fairway and across
to #9 fairway. |
This picture shows the approximate location of the original dam (red
line) and the old, abandoned irrigation lines (yellow). The burgandy
line points to where the leak was discovered. |
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GM Dan Robertson (left)looks into the hole where
the original irrigation lines were excavated. This is adjacent
to the turn around circle in the cart path on 18 tee box.
In the photo above and the two below, you can see the air bubbles
that appeared when a large air compressor was attached to the old
irrigation lines. This is how the crew discovered where the
water was leaking into the old pipes. |
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Above you can see the pipe that leads to the old pump house.
It intersect with a "T" just a few feet in front of it. |
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Once the lake was drawn down, the end of the pipe was filled with
concrete. The two pipes that cross through the dam were then
cut open (above) to allow them to be completely sealed. |
Forms were built around the pipes (this one is over the pipe shown
at left) and four yards of concrete were poured to seal the lines so
that no water will get into them again. |
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Quick-Time movie
showing location of leak.
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