A solid solution

The bunkers at Atlanta Athletic Club’s Highlands Course are designed to championship caliber, with very severe, angled faces.

After a heavy rain or irrigation cycle, superintendent Tyler Andersen noticed the moisture would run off the faces and settle at the bottom of the bunker. The bottoms would then become wet and compact, while the faces would dry out and become fluffy.

As the sand dried on the face, mixed with disruption of play, the ball would embed on the angled slope of the bunker.

“As a staff, we needed to find a way to retain moisture in the faces of the bunkers so golf shots would hit and release to the bottom of the bunker,” Andersen says.

Andersen shares the process of finding a solution to this problem, long-term results and return on investment.
 

How did you learn about this potential solution?

We heard about the [Capillary Concrete] product in December 2012. They were having a demonstration at a golf course a couple hours away from us. They had the mixture, all the aggregate, and actually installed the product into the bunker right there. We saw how easy it was to install on site. We were very interested in its moisture retention capabilities and how well the product worked on severe slopes.
 

What was your decision making process in choosing the product?

We’d tried everything you can possibly think of. So when we saw how Capillary Concrete could potentially solve our moisture problem on our bunker faces, we jumped all over it.

We did our first trial bunker – the most severely sloped – last July. It was the most notorious, problematic bunker for us. We felt like it was a good test run to try it on that bunker. We did a six-month trial before bringing it to our board of directors.
 

What was the cost – in dollars, time and labor to –implement the product?

The total project cost was about $50,000, including labor, product and material costs, sand, drip irrigation tubing, wiring and miscellaneous costs. It was $17,000 to $18,000 for the entire amount of the product we used. Overall, it was less than we thought we would spend. We were able to achieve a lot more by spending a lot less.

What’s the return on investment?

It would be safe to say that the return is fairly rapid. Not necessarily monetarily, but in terms of saving on the maintenance of the faces and on member satisfaction. You see a very quick return in terms of both of those things. And, I’m not so sure you can put a price on member satisfaction.

If you had to do it over, would you do anything different?

I don’t know if we would do anything differently because of how well it’s helped solved our problems. I’m interested to see its life expectancy. Does it last 15 to 20 years? But as of now, it’s helped us solve a very demanding bunker problem.