Now that the back nine irrigation project is complete, we are learning how to use the system and fine tune the system so we can achieve the maximum benefit for all it has to offer. The first thing I want to know, is the effective amount of water the sprinkler heads deliver on a putting green over a set amount of time.
When we make decisions to irrigate, we take into account the amount of water lost through the day by way of evaporation, or from the turf transpiring. What we don't do, it pick an arbitrary time, like 5 minutes, and then turn all the sprinkler heads on for that amount of time. We want to know how long it takes to deliver a 1/10" of water or 1/2" of water, for example. To find out, we placed 10 rain gauges (like the one above) across the surface of the green, randomly. The sprinkler heads were turned on for a period of 10 minutes. Afterwards, we collected the data to see how much water, and how uniformly, was distributed across the putting surface. Several greens were calibrated this way. In the coming week, this type of calibration and measurement will be expanded to fairways and tees as well. On average, we found that 10 minutes was enough time to deliver 0.30" of water across the surface. Knowing this, helps in many of our management decisions.
