Founders Club Irrigation Renovation

       You may have seen, playing the Founders Club, associates digging holes around the irrigation control boxes. You may also know that they are converting their irrigation controls from hydraulic to electric. I am going to try, as best I can, to describe this process and show you some photos of the old style hydraulic system vs photos of the modern system.

Assistant Andy Sparks and associate George Grannis trenching around the old control boxes.

Close up of the hole. You can see the concrete pad that the boxes rest on.

       The above photos illustrate the what and where of this discussion. Each field controller is located centrally on each hole that it controls. In the new modern style system, these controllers house the antenna for the radios, the radio address card, and the relay cards to each individual station and the wiring necessary for power and signalling.

Old style field controller.

      Here you can see the older control system that the Founders Club is slowly phasing out. There were no electrical controls whatsoever. There was no way to control the irrigation by radio communication. This system was run solely by hydraulic water pressure.

City water valve controlling the main hydraulic feed.

Hydraulic lines exiting control box out to each sprinkler head.

     

Old style hydraulic field controller.

       The only way to run the irrigation system was to turn the individual timer dials as illustrated above. The dials above controlled the amount of time that each individual station would run. Operation of the system at night would be controlled in tandem by the timer dials and the central control system shown below.

Old style central control.

Close up of the old style central control.

      The overnight watering system at the Founders was less sophisticated than most homeowners irrigation controls. In the photo above, you can see the irrigation cycle being set to run on Wednesday at 12:00 AM. Two plastic pins are used to set the day and start time for the irrigation.

       The process of converting at the Founders Club is not to eliminate the hydraulic system completely, but to modernize it until a complete overhaul can be finished. Below is a picture of a completed conversion.

Solenoid housing. Contains solenoids, pilot valves, wiring to
central controller and hydraulic feed to sprinkler heads.

Renovated field controller.

        The idea is to take the existing hydraulic system and add electrical controls to it. We do this by installing an enclosure in the ground near the controller to house the solenoids and pilot valves. In a modern system, the pilot valves and solenoids are attached directly to each individual sprinkler head. The picture above right shows a sprinkler with the accessories in place. We call these valve-in-head sprinklers.

Valve-in-Head Sprinkler

     
       The modern sprinklers open and close hydraulically, however the entire system is controlled by electricity. The old system at the Founders used only hydraulic controls. You did not have the ability to spontaneously water dry spots throughout the day. Any water application was met with the challenge of going to each individual control box and manually turning on each station. The old style system would only allow one station per box to water at a time. This caused the irrigation process to take much longer than it does with the new electrical system, where multiple stations can be running at the same time.

      The renovation also included a new computer system to organize and control irrigation events. The computer allows us to control each individual head on the golf course from just the click of a mouse.  This allows us to minimize the watering of wet areas and increase watering of dryer areas. The setup of the old system required you to visit every field controller and set the run times for each location. The central control computer allows you to adjust run time with the simple click of a mouse.

        The irrigation renovation at the Founders Club is near completion. The installation of grounding plates and rods will be the last step. We will have a post detailing that job shortly after completion.