Tag Archive for: Bunker

Weybrook Park GC Implements Sealed Bunker Solution

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Weybrook Park GC Implements Sealed Bunker Solution: Weybrook Park G.C. in Hampshire has just completed the full renovation of all 22 greenside bunkers on the back nine of its West course, in partnership with Bunker specialists EcoBunker.

Faced with an ongoing environmental battle born form a chalk based site, open landscape and menagerie of burrowing animals, EcoBunker and the team at Weybrook devised a fully sealed solution that is already reaping rewards for the club.

Weybrook Park GC Implements Sealed Bunker Solution

Weybrook Park GC Implements Sealed Bunker Solution

“The course was well regarded by members and visitors, but the bunkers were by far the most complained about feature. We are on a chalk based site so the bunkers were prone to erosion around the faces and edges, which didn’t look great and regularly contaminated the sand,” reported Luke Kenney, course manager at Weybrook Park G.C.

“In addition to contamination, the wind moved the sand around, and with 800 members, the footfall through bunkers made it very hard to maintain consistent playing conditions. Add in poor drainage and regular sand washout in heavy rain, and the bunkers were a real headache for the greenkeeping team and the club.”

In response to the challenge at Weybrook, the team consulted EcoBunker and agreed that a fully sealed bunker solution would address the issues faced at the club, while a training and self-installation plan would keep the project within budget.

“We knew that we needed a full bunker solution – liner, walls and edges – but we also needed to keep costs down, so a product that the team could fit ourselves was really important. Having researched the market, EcoBunker liner and edging was simple to fit in all conditions, incredibly durable over the long-term, and the team was happy to share its expertise and help us develop the necessary fitting skills in-house. Not only has the product been superb, the team at EcoBunker has been great to work with at every stage of the project.”

While EcoBunker synthetic edges and walls are known throughout the worldwide golf industry, a lesser known innovation is it’s EcoTec™ bunker liner featuring a proprietary filament matrix, seamless finish and forgiving playability.

“As soon as I saw the EcoTec liner I could visualise how efficient it would be holding the sand in place, which wasn’t the case with the alternatives I saw. We’ve also had feedback from the general manager on how forgiving it is on impact. He is really happy from a health and safety perspective, that golfers will be protected if they do play shots that reach through the sand.”

With the first 22 bunkers complete, the team at Weybrook is preparing for the next phases of the project, with a view to completing all bunkers on the West course within the next 3 years. With the initial phase being met with unanimous appreciation, the question only remains of how fast the team can work!

“The new bunkers look great,” concluded Luke. “The edges are sharp and tidy, we have no erosion or issues with animal damage, the maintenance burden has reduced and most of all our golfers are happy. The whole project has been a huge success and we look forward to finishing the course in phases over the next three years.”

And for more information on how EcoBunker can help meet the challenges faced at your course, visit www.ecobunker.co.uk

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Smithco Sprayers, Rollers and Bunker Rakes

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Smithco Sprayers, Rollers and Bunker Rakes: The Smithco range of golf course maintenance equipment will be on display at BTME as they return to BTME for 2024 on stand 604 in Hall 6.

The Spray Star range features four industry-leading, self-propelled, GPS-controlled sprayers with numerous control options including application rate, turn compensation pulse and the industry-leading 25cm nozzle spacing offering a 100% greater accuracy than competitors.

Smithco Sprayers, Rollers and Bunker Rakes

Smithco Sprayers, Rollers and Bunker Rakes

Smithco’s Tournament greens rollers provide fast, consistent and true putting surfaces. With rolling widths from 91 cm to 1.78 metres, there’s a machine ideal for maximum efficiency on your course.

Their commitment to cutting-edge technologies and environmentally-conscious products, such as the  Sand Star 48V Electric bunker rake, places their equipment in a class of its own. With 50 different attachments, Smithco’s bunker machines will meet any and all of your course’s needs.

Come and see the Smithco products on stand 604 in Hall 6.

www.smithco.com

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In-house bunker project

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In-house bunker project: Somerset Hills CC in New Jersey is close to finishing a bunker project involving the installation of the Capillary Bunkers lining system across the course, which was originally designed by legendary architect A. W. Tillinghast in 1918. 

“I started here in 2009 and the bunkers here were in bad shape then,” says course superintendent Ryan Tuxhorn. “We were looking at doing a bunker project then, and when we had a meeting with our architect, Brian Slawnik of Renaissance Golf Design, we discussed it and he told us he did not like the idea. He said that bunkers should be a finishing touch and it was more important to get mowing lines and playing surfaces right.”

In-house bunker project

In-house bunker project

Several years on, though, with Tuxhorn having the course mostly where he wanted it, the question of bunkers came up again. Although Somerset Hills’s bunkers, built fairly early in his career, are not the enormous, high-flashed traps often associated with Tillinghast, Tuxhorn knew he needed a liner, and also that, ideally, he wanted to do the work in-house.

That desire to fix the bunkers with his own crew led Tuxhorn to Capillary Bunkers. “Three years ago, we installed a few Capillary bunkers as a test, and in August 2019, we were more aggressive, opening up 16 smaller bunkers in advance of a visit by Brian, to check that we could install the liner in-house and complete the bunkers in timely fashion while still maintaining a golf course. And we found it was a comfortable process,” he says.

With Slawnik’s help, Tuxhorn divided his bunkers into three grades – going from one, which meant no work was needed to the outside at all and the only work was to the sub-grade including new drainage and installation of liner and move on to three, which meant a complete redo.

“By the end of next year we should be 95 per cent done,” he says. “At the moment we only have one green’s worth of bunkers to do and we have done some of the fairway bunkers too. The work is coming out great and the members are really happy with it. Last year, the workload was fine – we were pretty well staffed and my then Senior Assistant is a really good project manager. This year has been a little bit more difficult as he got a superintendent’s job and it has been really difficult to get staff. But I have been here a while and we’re pretty efficient with our practices. We have the golf course largely where we want it and it gives us some time to take on other projects. In August while we had college and high school help, we pushed pretty hard on it. It’s been a great project for us and I’m very proud of the results.”

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Capillary Concrete solving bunker problems

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Capillary Concrete solving bunker problems: The exclusive Loch Lomond Golf Club in Scotland is coming to the end of a huge four year renovation project – at a total cost of £7.5 million, probably the most costly in the history of British golf – in which 85 per cent of the golf course has been sand-capped (apart from the USGA greens), its drainage infrastructure rebuilt, its irrigation system completely renewed and its bunkers reconstructed using the Capillary Bunkers lining system.

Surrounded by mountains and next to Britain’s largest freshwater lake, Loch Lomond has always faced huge problems caused by its environment. “We have a lot of bunkers – and a lot of rain,” says David Cole MG, the club’s director of golf course and estates. “We average around 2000mm (79 inches of rain a year), and our bunker design has some steep faces in places. As a result, we have always suffered badly from washouts and contamination. Bunker maintenance is our second largest consumer of greenkeeping resources, second to greens – due to the design, the size (8500m2), the amount, the player expectations and the environment, it takes a lot of resources to prepare the bunkers internally and externally for play on a daily basis, and it was frustrating not being able to produce a consistently good product from this valuable resource due to the ageing infrastructure and the uncontrollable element of frequent rainfall.

Capillary Concrete solving bunker problems

Capillary Concrete solving bunker problems

Cole and his team, along with contractor Esie O’Mahony of GolfLink Evolve, have rebuilt the course from the bottom up. The new drainage pipes are laid in trenches lined with geotextile to reduce the ingress of fine particles, and the pipes themselves have been resized to deal with the volume of water. The project was planned to be completed over the winter of 2019/20, but the Covid-19 pandemic meant that two holes were left unfinished. Those have been dealt with over this winter.

In among this huge quantity of construction, Cole was determined to improve the consistency of the bunker presentation and reduce the internal bunker maintenance challenge. “We wanted to try to eliminate sand contamination and washouts and ensure we give our members a quality product no matter the weather,” he says. “After reviewing and trialling the options available, we selected Capillary Concrete throughout the project to line the bunkers. The product gives a lot of confidence. It’s concrete, so you know it is going to last, and the fact that you can install in wet weather situations is a huge plus for us as the renovation and installations took place throughout the wettest period of the year. The cost is obviously important – we are spending a lot of money on this project, but we are conscious that it is our members’ money, and we want to get good value for them – and Capillary Bunkers was very competitive.”

Cole says he is already seeing the benefits. “The simple fact is that we aren’t spending hours pushing sand back up bunker faces after rain. Ultimately since the liner has been installed the sand does not slip off the face after heavy rain events and daily preparations to present a good product for our members and guests is less labour intensive than previous. This allows us to focus more time on the detail work of internal bunker maintenance, and/or redirect resources to other priority areas that been neglected prior to this undertaking. Most days, three guys can deal with the internal bunker preparation, when previously it was five or six. Quantifying that isn’t easy and COVID-19 has not helped, but I think we may see a forty-fifty per cent reduction in resources we use preparing the internals of bunkers yet still producing a superior product.”

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Irish links extends bunker longevity

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Irish links extends bunker longevity: The Island GC outside Dublin, generally regarded as one of Ireland’s finest courses, has rebuilt a large proportion of its revetted bunkers using a new solution from synthetic bunker solutions provider EcoBunker.

The course, which is currently undergoing a renovation at the hands of architects Mackenzie and Ebert, has adopted a new approached created by EcoBunker inventor and CEO Richard Allen, that sees the bottom six turf layers of the revetted wall built from synthetic turf, while the rest is natural.

Irish links extends bunker longevity

“Revetted bunkers decay from the bottom up, which is only to be expected because it is the bottom of the wall that is most exposed to water,” says Allen. “When the bottom of the wall fails, wind and rain get in behind the revet and remove sand, eventually causing the wall to collapse. With synthetic turf at the base, this will not happen, and the longevity of the wall will be significantly enhanced.”

“Setting the base of a revetted bunker is the part of the build that takes the most time,” says course manager Dave Edmondson. “With the EcoBunker base in place, all we will have to do when it comes to rebuilding the wall is to remove the natural revet with a spade and replace the turf. Six layers of artificial turf is a totally solid base on which to build the rest of the wall. It’s not going to move. Our revetted bunkers normally last between three and five years – south facing ones degrade faster than others – so the improvement using this EcoBunker method could be quite substantial.”

Edmondson says it is hard to see a downside of this new method. “We have to buy in my revetting turf, so putting in a synthetic base will actually make rebuilding cheaper in the future,” he explains. “And there is absolutely zero aesthetic impact. When the sand is ready for play, the synthetic turf is all below the sand line. Everything you can see is natural; it looks just like a normal revetted bunker.”

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