We have a great week in store for us. You can see the irrigation contractor is starting on #11. With the weather finally cooperating, we are stripping sod (where the irrigation will be trenched) a couple holes ahead so when the ground freezes again, we don't have to worry about getting the sod removed. In short, a trencher can cut through an inch or two of frozen soil but a sod cutter is ineffective on frozen turf. Once the trenching is complete, the pipe is installed, and covered with soil before a soil compactor is run over the area. Of course, the last step is replacing the sod right were it came from. To date, the 10th and 18th holes are completely finished. We have 7 holes remaining and provided weather like this, we think we'll be able to finish 1.5-2 holes per week.
A majority of my time lately has been spent with Town of Highlands employee, Carlton Wheatley. Carlton is the town's GIS Coordinator. Highlands CC is full of activity below the surface. Everything from town water lines, telephone lines, fiber optic lines, electrical lines, sewer lines, town sewer pipes, septic tanks, septic drain fields, conduit, old irrigation lines, culvert pipe and of course, drain lines can be found under the turf. There's a whole array of things you can find below the surface here and thanks to the Town's ground penetrating radar (GPR) unit, we are able to find it all. Carlton and I have been staying a few steps ahead of the irrigation contractor, locating the land mines before the troops advance. If it wasn't for this man and his machine and the town allowing us access to both, we would be at a major disadvantage and it would certainly slow the project down. I've talked about this machine before in previous posts. We're able to determine the pipe diameter, depth of pipe, depth of the water table, etc. Even more impressive, in the case of conduit, we can tell if there is wire within the conduit pipe.
