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Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

July 31, 2018/in News, Press Release/by Rosie Duckworth

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation: Weeks of high temperatures have turned golf courses across the country brown and triggered Amber health warnings, and while there’s not much to be done to counteract either, one thing you can do is keep your lakes and ponds well aerated to prevent them from becoming stagnate. A perfect example of this […]

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

July 31, 2018/in Industry News, News, Press Release/by External Source

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens: It was around this time in the long, hot summer of 1976 that things were getting really desperate for the nation’s greenkeepers and groundsmen. It remains the hottest, driest summer on record, though one that this year is threatening to outdo, and it forced those in search of water to keep […]

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

July 31, 2018/in News, Press Release/by Rosie Duckworth

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

July 31, 2018/in Industry News, News, Press Release/by External Source

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

July 31, 2018/in News, Press Release/by Rosie Duckworth

A perfect example of this on an epic scale comes from Frilford Heath, the 54-hole championship golf course complex near Oxford, which had an Otterbine Air Flo 3 diffuser installed in its 6m, 10-million-gallon reservoir to aerate the water two years ago. The idea was to make the water good enough quality to irrigate the course, says course manager Sid Arrowsmith.

“We always knew this was a long-term and challenging project. The water comes from a brook downstream through farming fields, full of pollutants and run-off nitrates,” Sid says. “Add to the fact that the silt and sediment at the bottom of the reservoir literally hadn’t seen the light of day for ten years and we knew the diffuser had its work cut out. Even so, none of us expected the extent!

“We experienced, as anticipated, algal growth; the surprise was how much algal growth! Reesink’s Rob Jackson visited us regularly and I think even he was surprised at how abundant it was.”

But that’s nature for you. And water full of nutrients like Frilford Heath’s is, as Sid explains, “going to have an inordinate amount of organic mixture in it”. However, the Air Flo 3 kept busy and Sid “never once doubted” it was up to the job.

The water now is crystal clear again and while Sid is under no illusion that an algal bloom is possible, especially in this weather, the diffuser is ready for the challenge. “There is more oxygen in that reservoir than ever before. If we did incur another algal bloom, the water is in the best possible position to counteract it.”

Meantime, the water is being used all over the course, doing exactly what Sid intended. So, at what saving does this come? “Back in the very dry summers of ‘94, ‘95 and ‘96, we were spending £25,000 a year irrigating the course off the mains. It is literally a fraction of that now. The only thing we use mains water for is washing the turf machinery and toilet facilities.”

For Sid, the Otterbine diffuser has done exactly what he intended it to do – it has made 10-million-gallons of water ready to use and given the club a degree of self-sufficiency it hasn’t experienced before. And as Sid, a greenkeeping veteran, one of only 70 BIGGA Master Greenkeepers in the UK and ex-BIGGA president, says: “greenkeeping wouldn’t be greenkeeping without a few challenges along the way!”

And we guess that statement now includes the country’s longest heatwave for 42 years! It’s not all in the preparation either, Otterbine’s extensive range of efficient aerators can make quick work of smaller ponds and lakes, so if the hot weather is creating problem water features, contact Otterbine’s distributor Reesink today.

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

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Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

July 31, 2018/in Industry News, News, Press Release/by External Source

Exeter City drew up a plan to pour 10,000 gallons of treated sewage effluent on to the pitch. Torquay United trucked in waste water from a sewage works in Heathfield, and Brentford brought in 30,000 gallons from their local treatment plant. The only way the rugby league club New Hunslet could render the ground at their Elland Road Greyhound Stadium soft enough for a cup tie against Keighley to go ahead was to use a tanker full of water collected from a nearby car factory, which was contaminated with oil and “other waste materials”. “Tests on it show that it does not constitute a hazard to health,” wrote the Times, reassuringly.

David Oxley, secretary of the Rugby League, said that though “this is traditionally a hard game for hard men”, playing it on hard ground would be one hard too many. “When it becomes parched and cracks open, that’s the danger point,” he said. “We have suggested that clubs might use purified sewage water, or any similar method. It is very much a local affair. Each club will have to decide for itself but having watched a game last Sunday when it looked more like a battlefield, I think the time is not far off when we shall be forced to call games off.”

The Rugby Football Union and its Welsh equivalent both suggested that clubs should consider cancelling games if pitches remained parched. “We are leaving it to the common sense of the clubs,” a Welsh Rugby Union spokesman said, “but if they did come to us for advice I think we would have to say don’t play unless it rains.”

The Guardian’s Frank Keating spoke to the director of the Sports Turf Research Institute, John Escritt, whose advice to groundsmen was simple: “The first advice is to trust in the power of prayer – and if that doesn’t work, which it won’t, leave the grass long because it can then collect what bit of moisture there might be around at dawn.”

At Cardiff Arms Park there was no need for prayer. Workmen had been laying the foundations of a new stand when the desperate groundsman, Bill Hardiman, pleaded with them to dig at the river end of the pitch to see if they found water. They did, just nine feet down, and again at the opposite end. From then on Hardiman sprayed his pitch for 12 hours a day. “I have had the water analysed and it is quite drinkable,” he said. “I drink it every day.”

Tony Bell, now Middlesbrough’s head groundsman, was just a child in 1976. “I remember thinking it was fantastic,” he recalls. This year Bell and his team, named the best in the Championship last season, have had to cope with similar challenges. “We’ve had dry times before, but not as long as this, day after day after day,” he says. “Irrigation’s OK, but it doesn’t go on the same as rain. It’s never as even. You only need a breath of wind and it blows about. Some parts of the pitch are getting double what they need, others nothing at all.”

Bell has several advantages over 1970s-era groundskeepers, including automatic irrigation sprinklers, moisture meters, consultant agronomists, and four decades’ worth of advances in turf science. Half the seed he laid this summer was tetraploid grass, a new, hardier, stronger kind of rye. He also has a borehole that provides plentiful water to the training ground. Yet still he has struggled. “Temperature has been the biggest challenge,” he says. “The heat basically forces us to put water on during the day just to keep the grass alive, but that also creates disease. We’ve had pythium blight, which is a warm-weather disease you very rarely get in this country. It’s devastating, it just makes the grass go strawlike. We had a lot of pitches that were severely knocked back, and they’re only just recovering now. Down south it’s been 30-odd degrees, which is far more challenging. Up here 21-22 is a normal summer, but 25-plus is a different ball game.”

Christian Spring is UK research operations manager at the Sports Turf Research Institute, and was recently at Carnoustie to monitor playing conditions at the Open. “They’ve not had a huge amount of rain, certainly a lot less than they’re used to,” he says. “It’s been about managing the water reserves that they’ve got and trying to keep everything ticking over so it looks authentic, feels authentic but still plays well as a golf course. This year was an opportunity to hold an Open Championship in true summer conditions. It’s a different challenge. Overwatering can be just as bad as underwatering. As with all things in life, finding the right balance is difficult. The art of a groundsman is knowing when to back off and not be tempted to turn on the tap.”

As this summer continues along its arid path, although this weekend’s rain has brought some relief, it is also about looking beseechingly at the heavens and hoping that at some point nature will take care of that job for you, and ideally before the borehole runs dry, the hosepipe bans kick in and you’re forced to put in a call to the sewage plant.

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Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

Groundsmen Look To The Heavens

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