Irrigation water is one of, if not the most important tool a superintendent has to work with. It's what keeps the golf course green, supplementing rainfall during times of heat and drought. It's also used to move fungicides and other products into the rootzone following a spray application. In short, my team spends countless hours making sure the irrigation system in functioning properly with precision.
However, like any piece of equipment, things do go wrong and those times can be quite stressful. Take last night, for example. An alarm on my cell phone went off at 3:30AM, telling me one of our three pumps failed, causing a low pressure discharge. In other words, it shut the whole system down. Upon arriving at the pumpstation (the rock building below #18 tees), the smell of smoke consumed the building. After resetting the station and trying to get the system back up the pressure, pump one was making a terrible sound, followed by additional smoke. It became obvious to me that the pump shaft was broken. This means there are only 2 pumps supporting the golf course, rather than 3. I called our pumpstation service company, who are fantastic, and will have someone out in the next day to pull the pump, in order to take it in for repairs. However, we are still left with 2 pumps.
Now for the good news! In 2014, when I worked with Flotronex to design this system, we built it so the irrigation system could fully operate with ease on only two pumps. The third pump is cycled in regularly to evenly spread the use/wear evenly over all three pumps. Most of the time, however, the third pump acts as a backup in the event of a situation like this. Once again, proper planning and a well thought out design saves the day!