An irrigation evolution

It hasn’t really sunk in yet. Two years ago, superintendent Bill Hamilton finally marshaled the money, and the will, to replace the obsolete, leaky irrigation system at Lake Wildwood Golf Club, an hour northeast of Sacramento, California. He doesn’t miss that crumbling, 50-year-old, asbestos main line. Not at all. It’s just that Hamilton cannot quite believe that he’ll never see it — or its replacement — ever again. It didn’t quite compute.

Hamilton opted for an all-poly AquaFuse irrigation package supplied by CMF Global, then installed by course contractor Heritage Links. All the underground components featured thermoplastic HDPE pipe, melted and fused together to form a single, monolithic HDPE irrigation system. Without joints or thrust blocks anywhere in that system, Hamilton understood there was a limit to what could go wrong on 10, 20, 40 years down the road.

“By then, I’ll be long gone,” he said. “My replacement will probably be long gone, as well.”

HDPE technology has been around for some time now. But when Hamilton understood that even the system’s gate valves would be all-poly ball valves — instead of the metal, vertical gate valves on which so many irrigation systems had depended, for decades — he confronted a very new, entirely pleasant reality.

“The poly has been used for a long time in the oil and gas business; that’s my understanding. The cast-iron valve is the last thing to leave,” Hamilton said. “If you’re asking me about tradeoffs, I couldn’t say there has been one: The poly valve is so bulletproof. I honestly wonder if you even need so many valves. With the welded pipe, it’s essentially one pipe through the whole system, where the joints are stronger than the pipe itself. They say it’ll last 40 to 50 years but we honestly don’t know how long it’ll go. The system is so good now, it’s only gonna fail if you break it yourself — if you put a backhoe through it or something. The weakest link is the sprinkler head.

“It’s hard to get my head around it sometimes. A superintendent traditionally spends so much time and effort fixing an irrigation system. We certainly did. But this deal is maintenance free. It’s made my life and my crew’s so much more enjoyable.”

According to Tim Hubbard, vice president of irrigation at Houston-based Heritage Links, the pace of change in this specific area of course construction/renovation has exceeded the lived experience of a great many superintendent and course owners — the individuals who most directly experience the inefficiencies of a leaky irrigation system. These are also the folks, Hubbard said, who must eventually pull the trigger on replacing or upgrading those systems.

Even an old, leaky system that deploys outdated technology remains familiar to these guys, Hubbard said. Superintendents understand the potential problems and become adept at fixing them. However, as Hamilton has experienced firsthand at Lake Wildwood, the all-poly irrigation life is a more efficient, carefree life.

“The all-poly ball valves, like the HDPE piping itself, are easy to install and to use,” Hubbard said. “Sometimes they aren’t so readily available, but supply chain issues have affected so many things these days. It’s my feeling that, of late, HDPE ball valves have been more readily available than the cast-iron gate valves. And the pricing of the poly ball valves is comparable to the cast-iron valves.

“There are some things supers need to get used to: The majority of the piping in a golf irrigation system is 6 to 8 inches in diameter. Maybe a handful of 10s and 12s. When initially filling a system, you can have 120 PSI on that ball, in the ball valve. So there’s a bypass system, which fills up the downstream side and equalizes the pressure, before you turn it loose. I tell people to just leave them both [the main valve and bypass] open for operation. If you have to shut down, close the main line first, then the smaller bypass valve.

“So, a superintendent has to develop a knowledge of these systems, like anything else. They also need to get their minds away from there being just a 90-degree turn to enable the most force. They need to back off a bit and not over-torque the smaller valve. It’s a new technology. There’s some education involved, but it ain’t rocket science.”

Heritage Links recently installed a similar all-poly system, piping and gate valves, for superintendent Aaron Englehart at BraeBurn Country Club in Houston. This job was noteworthy on a couple fronts: First, in Hubbard’s estimation, this was one of the first projects where the choice to use all-poly ball joints was made at no extra charge. In other words, there was no premium attached to this new technology, compared to the cast-iron option, he says.

This is a natural, inevitable pricing phenomenon once a new technology gains wider acceptance, according to Chris Menno, technical service and sales chief at CMF Global. This shift came even faster than one might expect, here in the North American golf market, because “Internationally, the U.S. is behind the curve a little bit,” Menno said. “The all-poly approach is already very prevalent in Europe, and it’s easy to see why. So much less can go wrong. The AquaFuse brand that we created under CMF, it represents a package of materials where we cherry-picked the best of the best. All the resins we’ve used to make the poly are virgin resins. We found the best pipe, valves and fittings. Once we’re 100 percent HDPE, it all comes under the AquaFuse 25-year warranty, which covers every bit of black plastic on the project.

“At that stage, it’s really down to how it’s installed. We’ve trained all the best installers, like Heritage Links. They’re as expert in these processes as they are in everything else they do.”

At BraeBurn, Hubbard and the Heritage Links team moved the state of the art forward another notch when they managed to join the all-poly irrigation system directly to the pump-station discharge pipe. Menno, for one, was impressed: “They transitioned from the interior of the pump station — an 8-inch steel pipe, a flat-faced bolted joint — and started by fusing from that point, above ground, to the rest of the network. All poly, all fused. Not a single mechanical joint restraint, glue or thrust block.”

If the all-poly irrigation era fills superintendents like Hamilton with a sense of wonder, Hubbard and Menno are not far behind. The technology addresses and solves so many issues, Hubbard said. He pointed out that all-poly piping and ball valves represent another massive step forward for any property with high-salt irrigation water, or acidic/corrosive soils. In most any situation where traditional ductile iron fittings and valves corrode and fail, the HDPE will not.

“There’s a phrase used in the assessment of irrigation systems called allowable leakage,” Menno said. “A municipal main line, even a brand new one, is expected and allowed to leak a certain amount and still pass inspection. Different formulas exist for pipes of certain sizes, but a typical gasketed PVC system of yesteryear can actually loose up to 335,000 gallons a year, on account of leaks, and they still pass an allowable leakage test! It’s amazing what we used to consider ‘tight’. Because we have eliminated bolts, gaskets and restrains with the all-poly approach, we essentially achieve zero allowable leakage. It’s just not going to happen.”

“In irrigation,” Hubbard added, “what we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re seeing accelerated aging tests that show these products may have a 100-year life at installed properties. If you’re putting it in the ground now, even an infant born today who grows up to be a golf course superintendent will never see or deal with a main line in his irrigation system. Not during his lifetime.”