DESIGN CONCEPTS: Irrigation systems

They say the heart of any golf course system is the irrigation, and the analogy is apt. And they say that if there is one area you shouldn’t cut corners, its irrigation, which is getting harder to do, given the cost increases in transportation and plastics prices.

Firekeeper is the first course where I truly felt the effects of colliding trends of longer courses and reduced turf for environmental and budget reasons. I worked hard with Landscapes Unlimited and irrigation designer (and fellow GCI columnist) Erik Christiansen to integrate irrigation system with golf course design, clearing and turf lines, using the latest developments in irrigation to contain costs and increase long term quality.

The most important may be the use of irrigation HDPE pipe. While I had previously used HDPE for difficult situations, like major creek crossings, this is my first course to use HDPE irrigation pipe wall-to-wall. The material costs for HDPE are greater than PVC, and many projects propose it, but "value engineer" it out of the final bid to save money. Landscapes Unlimited believes in the long-term value and leak resistance of HDPE, and felt that the material cost of HDPE could be offset by reduced labor and warranty costs. And, they have high-quality crews, trained by the manufacturer in installing HDPE to get the results desired, which is not the case with all installers.

Erik saved money and preserved natural areas by using smaller sprinklers around the tees. He also used a two-wire decoder control system, which reduces wire and labor costs, while also eliminating field controllers. The traditional "spaghetti bowl" of wiring is gone, which saves money and should reduce potential for lightning strikes. As with HDPE, decoders increase the importance of a quality crew, especially doing the wire splicing.

Using smaller sprinklers around the tees required allowed us to keep more native areas closer to the tee surface, resulting in a more natural prairie look. The championship tees often play from a different angle than the main tees so and most require carries of 180-200 yards over natives to the fairway corridor. Erik and I coordinated the design of the main tee areas, which are larger, and some used large sprinkler while others worked better with smaller ones.

Each tee and fairway design was very site specific and required close design integration between the Landscapes Unlimited, Erik and myself. We cleared the trees and native grasses with the sprinkler corridors in mind, and then went back and made many revisions to both clearing and sprinkler layout to maximize coverage and match it to the turf and tree native edges or planted native grass lines closely.

As with most designs, we could always find a use for more sprinklers than we had budgeted. Erik wisely leaves a 50 sprinkler contingency in his designs (which we have always used!) and Landscapes Unlimited was willing to trade out smaller sprinklers for a fewer larger ones where possible and convert their labor savings to extra sprinklers to get the irrigation system we wanted.

We used a pre-fabricated pump station enclosure from the pump station manufacturer. These metal enclosures are far less expensive than stick and brick custom built structures, and have all the necessary access, fans and vents correctly built in. They aren’t very aesthetically pleasing, which often isn’t a problem, but our pump station is located in a highly visible area was, and will get some extra landscaping.

It takes a lot of hard work, but our team of professionals worked together to value engineer a high-quality irrigation system at a reasonable cost.

Jeffrey D. Brauer is a licensed golf course architect and president of GolfScapes, a golf course design firm in Arlington, Texas. Brauer, a past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, can be reached at jeff@jeffreydbrauer.com.