Spraying the savings

The retrofitted sprayer arrived at Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, W.Va., where a giddy maintenance crew prepared the unit for its debut by filling the tank to normal levels.

The unit sprayed 18 greens. When it returned to the shop, superintendent Nick Janovich noticed enough remaining substance to cover three more greens.

The application confirmed what Janovich unearthed through chats with colleagues, number-crunching and trials on demo units: Precision Turf Management (PTM) principles implemented in spraying are yielding significant savings.

Janovich had two sprayers retrofitted to provide GPS-guided systems based on the premise he would save at least 15 percent on chemical costs. The results of Oglebay’s initial greens application with one of its own retrofitted units suggest to Janovich the hilly, 72-hole facility made a wise investment.

“I can believe with the system that’s accurate to an inch that we can save 15 to 20 percent,” he says. “There are guys saying they are saving 25 to 28 percent. That personally might be a stretch, but I would say that 15 percent is a very, very fair estimate.”

A superintendent from a course with a modest budget sparked Janovich’s interest in GPS spraying.

Mark Kuehner is the superintendent at 7 Springs Golf Course, a family-owned public facility in Elizabeth, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. Kuehner became aware of PTM practices in spraying when a local sales representative introduced him to a GPS unit.

Kuehner’s initial reaction? “I told my rep, ‘That’s great for a private course. But there’s no way that something that costs $70,000 is for me,’” he says.

A year later, Kuehner is an advocates of GPS spraying. 7 Springs purchased a GPS-guided sprayer through a five-year financing plan in April 2013. “If we could save $15,000 per year, it would be great,” Kuehner says. “If we could save $25,000 per year, it was a no-brainer.”

7 Springs saved $27,000 in chemical costs last year, according to Kuehner. “We laugh at it now,” he says. “It’s like a license to print money.”
 

Spraying less, saving more

Before using GPS technology, Kuehner says 7 Springs calculated it had four acres of greens. Precise readings trimmed the area that needed sprayed to three acres. Similar reductions were made in the volume of pesticides applied to the course’s fairways and tees. “It makes sense, especially if you are spraying pesticides,” Kuehner says. “You don’t want to be overspraying. What we’re doing now is environmentally friendly and cutting back on the acreage you’re spraying, which cuts the waste on fairways, greens and tees.”

Courses with substantial maintenance budgets are also exploring the practice.

Adam Mis, the superintendent at Brookfield Country Club in Clarence, N.Y., maintains turf at what he calls a “high-end private club.” His search for a new sprayer started at the 2014 Golf Industry Show in Orlando, where he encountered Marcus Thigpen, owner of NuTec Soil. Thigpen directed Mis to a sales manager offering a Toro demo retrofitted with NuTec’s GPS-guided technology mounted to it. NuTec’s system can be mounted to existing equipment.

Brookfield’s 2014 maintenance budget allotted money for a new sprayer to replace a 13-year-old unit. But the GPS-guided unit Mis saw in Orlando cost $30,000 more than the club budgeted for a sprayer. Mis explained the benefits of GPS-guided spraying in an email to the club’s board of directors, greens chairman and general manager. Brookfield’s decision-makers granted Mis permission to purchase the unit, which also features the Toro Clean Rinse System.

The first time Mis used the unit, he filled a 300-gallon with 280 gallons of spray designed to distribute 80 gallons per acre. “I think I had 50 gallons left,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Holy cow. I have to readjust everything. There’s no overlap.’ Add that up over time, and this thing will pay for itself. If you had a $100,000 fungicide budget, you have to be knocking off $30,000 out of that easy because you are not spraying as much. That’s what I sold the membership on.”

The systems at Oglebay and Brookfield use Real Time Kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation and are accurate to within an inch, according to Janovich and Mis. RTK navigation requires circling the course once before the initial application to determine the areas needing sprayed. The data is then stored into a computer, making it available for each subsequent use. Some non-RTK systems require circling the course before each application to determine boundaries.

Superintendents and spray technicians receive access to software that provides video replay of applications and accumulates data. Creating repeatable data is one of the many advantages to GPS spraying using RTK navigation, Thigpen says.

“It’s going to go out and spray what you tell it to spray, it will spray where you tell it to spray and it will record everything, and then they can play it back on the software a week later or six months later,” Thigpen says. “It does all your chemical reports for you. It does all your application reports for you. It does everything by the computer. It’s totally self-sufficient. It drives itself, turns itself on and off. The only thing you have to do is fill it up and get it to the field or get it out on the hole.”

The only issues with GPS spraying, according to Thigpen, arise when products are not agitated properly and tips become clogged. “That’s human error,” Thigpen says. “Once they figure that out, they will not have an issue.”
 

Future of spraying

Smithco is the lone vehicle supplier with its own GPS product on the market. Smithco’s Star Command system debuted in 2012 and the company projects a $15,000 annual savings on a $50,000 chemical budget.

Toro is in the process of working on a GPS system, but marketing manager Steve Peterson says details won’t be revealed until the 2015 Golf Industry Show in San Antonio. John Deere also has explored the possibility of producing a GPS-guided sprayer, but the company is keeping its timeline confidential, according to product manager Brooks Hastings.

John Deere introduced a GPS-controlled system to the agriculture market in 2006, and lessons learned from the agriculture industry are aiding the company’s approach to the golf industry. Benefits being reaped in agriculture through GPS spraying also apply to golf course management, Hastings says.

“Many of the same efficiencies our agriculture products provide can also be attained in the golf environment,” Hastings says. “High performance, increased operator uptime and lower cost of operation through the use of GPS precision spraying are just a few of those benefits. The ability to keep accurate records and using less chemicals, labor and fuel lends itself to being an environmentally friendly and efficient solution also.”

Superintendents in areas with high humidity such as the East Coast, Great Lakes and Florida will likely see the biggest savings from using a GPS-guided sprayer, Peterson says.

“We are testing to make sure that what we offer will have a truly accurate savings of what we say it will,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t brought a unit out. We are flat-out doing our homework.”

Peterson, like many others in the industry, envisions GPS spraying becoming increasingly popular. “It will absolutely become the future of turf spraying, just like it has in the ag industry,” he says. “From what I understand in talking to some of the major ag sprayers, 70 to 80 percent of their sprayers go out the door with a GPS sprayer on it.”

A search to replace a 12-year-old sprayer sparked Clark Weld’s interest in GPS-guided units. Weld, the superintendent at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., leaned on friends in the agriculture industry, which in most cases adopts new technologies before the golf industry, for input on GPS technology.

“Farmers are pretty freakin’ smart,” Weld says. Weld purchased two 300-gallon GPS-guided units, which he started using in 2013. The crew at Hidden Creek maintains 55 acres of bentgrass turf and dollar spot represents a major problem from May until November. Learning how to maximize a new piece of equipment and spending $12,000 to purchase a tower because New Jersey isn’t as GPS friendly as some other states presented initial challenges. But Hidden Creek trimmed its chemical spending from $124,000 to $92,000 in 2013.

The software Weld uses provides data on more than 40 different elements, including spray pressure, type of application and elevation. “I’m at the tip of the iceberg,” Weld says. “It’s just amazing what you can do.” Mis, whose courses rests in the Buffalo suburbs, says he can input “as little or as much information” into his software program as he wants and his expanded chemical file provides comprehensive data to present to state or federal regulators.

Hidden Creek resides in a section of New Jersey densely populated with golf courses. No other course in the immediate area uses a GPS-guided sprayer. If a neighboring course purchases a unit, Hidden Creek could share the tower costs with another facility. So far, Weld is the only superintendent in his neighborhood implementing the practice.

“I understand that it’s going to take a long time for this to catch on,” Weld says. “If you don’t have a lot of acres, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I didn’t have 55 acres, if I was at 30 acres… I don’t know how quick you are going to recover the cost.”

For Janovich, GPS-guided spraying makes sense.

“Sometimes it’s hard to justify buying a greens mower or a fairway mower when you can spend a couple hundred dollars, throw some stuff at it and make it work,” he says. “Well, this is going above and beyond what we have and we can show that it was a great investment.”