Richard Peel Groundcare keep the water moving at Dyrham Park Golf and Country Club: Richard Peel Groundcare has installed sand-banding on 14 greens at Dyrham Park Golf and Country Club to enhance their primary drainage system.
The picturesque Hertfordshire course is renowned for its water hazards, with several placed across the 6,497 yards, but keeping water off the greens is what head greenkeeper, David Hicks was concentrated on.
The club had new drainage installed in their greens in 2015 and to make the system more efficient David wanted to use sand banding to link the two systems together, prompting him to use Richard Peel Groundcare’s Imants SandCat for the job.
“We’ve had main drainage installed at a deeper depth on our greens and we just wanted to keep the top surface open, and link the two systems up,” David said. “We wanted to remove the surface water and the sand will aid it getting into the lower drains and prevent any standing water.
“There are four sand based greens here that drain like a sieves so we didn’t have any work done on those, but it did go over 14 of our greens and our putting green which is the size of two greens.
“We’ve had some rain on the course and I’m pleased with how the water has drained through so far, albeit a small amount.”
Richard Peel (contact number is 07930 336594) places great emphasis on having the best machines for the job and this has led to investment in the highest quality possible, in this case the SandCat. “The SandCat offers sand injection to 10-15mm and uses de-compacting blades that cause very little disturbance and have minimal recovery time.” He explains
“Its compact size makes it ideal for greens and tees, and these factors combined are why the 14 greens at Dyrham Park now have consistently draining greens.”
But it wasn’t only the machine that impressed David. He also commended the workmanship and management of the work, which had to be completed during the clubs’ maintenance week.
“Because the project was going on during our maintenance week it was important that we were able to get on with the other work we had on, so it was important for us to be able to leave the operator on his own to work,” David explained.
“The operator, Tom, was a conscientious hard-working lad who picked up our course really quickly and used a good bit of common sense, so we were very comfortable with leaving him to get on with the job.
“I was very happy with the service overall because sometimes you have contractors offer things they can’t deliver, so it was very refreshing to work with a company who delivered on what they said.”
Overall the project took four and a half days to complete, with one day lost due to 51mm of rainfall over 24-hours that stopped all work on the course. However, at a rate of six greens a day all work was completed well within the pre-arranged time frame.
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