Green – Winter work
Winter work to refurbish & repair the green
The Green Team & other volunteers are in the throes of working to a planned schedule to return the green to its former glory & pristine condition pre Covid. The green was closed early to enable the workers to complete the majority of work before the worst of the weather set in. Click on the photos to see full size.
Day One:
This started on the 2nd of October, Cutting the grass short followed by Deep Tining with the Groundsman to improve the drainage & aeration whilst also breaking up the thatch & compaction by the use of 5” Tines. Then multiple passes with a couple of HD Scarifiers which removed 2.5 tonnes of dead grass or thatch. Then a Sea Weed based treatments & fertiliser was added to improve the soil quality. It looks a mess but this is only the 1st phase.
Scarifing & Tinning
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Grounds man with tines. Scarified & Mowed,
Brushing in the seed & fertaliser.
Day Two:
Scarifying separates the thatch from the soil & then allows the thatch to be collected & disposed of while evening out the remaining soil. Additives are then spread that will assist with breaking up the compacted layer & also promote deeper root growth.
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Day Three:
Another dressing of liquid seaweed fertilizer & a spraying of compaction breakup compound before finally re-seeding with new special mix of grass seed. Now we wait for it to germinate & to grow in the next couple of weeks. Fingers crossed!!!!!
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Phase Two:
31st of October, 29 days since all the renovation work has been done & it’s time to swish the green & cut it. No mean feat as the worms have been very busy & the green looks a mess. Not to worry as all members of the green team turn up & use all 6 swishers to clear them before we put the newly refurbished, very sharp mower, on to do the 1st cut. See the results below!!!!
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LOBC 4
1St Cut on 30th Oct
LOBC 1
10th FEB 2025 Installation of an Automatic Sprinkler System
Work will commence on the automatic sprinkler on 10th Feb & is scheduled to take 6 days. This will entail digging out the gutters to a depth of 300mm, burying a 50mm dia ring main with 1 pop up low angle sprinklers in the middle of each side. This will be fed by a 65mm dia main buried in a trench from a submersible pump in our current tank. The popup sprinklers will be operated in turn, by a programmer mounted in the chemical store, so that only one sprinkler is working at any time. This will give an even coverage of 2.5mm per tankful, with the minimum amount of overlap. The company, selected to complete this work, InScapes Ltd., comes highly recommended & has installed a number of these systems throughout the UK & a local one at Old Colwyn BC.
10th February 2025.
The work started today after the contractors had a 4 hour drive from their base but still arrived by 08.30. By the end of the day they had unloaded all the pipework & fittings, dug out the left hand gully, laid the pipe & backfilled the gully. See below:-
11th February 2025.
The work continued today with the lefthand end backfilled & levelled back to the original levels. The flagpole end was dug out to below 350mm, the pipes & pop-up sprinkler were laid & the trench was backfilled. The blue tank water feed pipe was also laid.
12th & 13th February 2025.
The work continued today with the workshop end being dug out, the feed from the tank connection Tee in 65mm pipe reducing down to 50mm pipe being laid with the pop-up & then back filled.
February 24th The First Test.
Members were invited to witness the first tests of the system to see the power of the jets along with the flow. The four pop-up heads are operated by a programmer that allows them to operate in sequence, each one delivering 190 lts every minute for up to 6 minutes , a total of 5,000 lts in 24 minutes. The next & final work will be the adjustment of all the pop-up heads to get full coverage of the green, snagging & instruction of 3 of the Green Team.
. Spring Work
The Green Team started the Spring Work to open up the Green the first weekend of March, ready for the Opening on the 14th March. Three members of the team this weekend gave the green a thorough scarifying followed by power brushing , treatments & an application of fertiliser. To round off our second day of work we switched on the new irrigation system to water the treatments in. It was very satisfying to watch 4,000 lts of water being applied evenly over the green in 20 minutes while the team had a well earned cuppa . That’s the way to do it!!!!
March 5th – First Spring cut to 7.0mm
