Dry weather continues with little relief in sight. You patience is much appreciated. As I mentioned before, it takes a minimum of 4 staff members a day to keep the golf course adequately irrigated. We try to use the sprinklers to a minimum in order to get the fairways as firm as possible given the circumstances. Golf course irrigation designer Brian Vinchesi explains:
"When you think about irrigating a golf course, the type of irrigation system is many times characterized by fairway row spacing – single row, double row, triple row and multiple row. It is assumed that the more rows, the more coverage, the higher the cost and the more sophisticated the irrigation system.
Although some of these generalizations may still apply, characterizing the irrigation system by the number of fairway rows is no longer an accurate description of the total system.
For many years single-row systems were the norm, but due to poor efficiency and uniformity they are pretty much obsolete.
After single row, there was double row which made the fairway watering more consistent, and then triple row which covered more of the rough.
As the number of rows increased, the sprinklers spacing generally became smaller, the flow per sprinkler less and, in some cases, the sprinkler operating pressure dropped. For example, a single-row system may have had a 90-foot sprinkler spacing with a 91-foot throw at 100 psi using 56 gallons per minute. Changing to double row, the spacing drops to 75 feet, pressure to 80 psi and flow to around 33 gpm per sprinkler. Triple rows commonly have spacings of 65 feet, operating pressure as low as 60-65 psi and 22-gpm flows. Costs increase as there are more sprinklers, pipe, swing joints wire and controllers. There is also increased coverage both in terms of total irrigation coverage and effective irrigation coverage."