Traver Creek and High Rains

The Traver Creek Project was started back in 2012 with multiple goals in mind. One of these was allowing Traver Creek to take high amounts of precipitation and slow down the time it takes for the water to reach the Huron River. This helps to alleviate flooding and allows some of the sediment to drop out. With almost 3 inches of rain in the past two days, we got a chance to compare how the creek handles high rain events. The following pictures compare current water levels with a storm that happened May 25-26, 2011, when 3.25 inches of rain fell and Nov 22nd, 2011 when 1.75 inches fell.

The bridge near #10 green in May 2011.

The same bridge in 2015.

#10 green (Nov 2011)

#10 green (2015)

Traver Creek from #13 green (Nov 2011)

Traver Creek in 2015.

#11 fairway in Nov 2011 (Now the location of the Arrowood Branch)

The Arrowood Branch in 2015 (Looking in the other direction.

#12 Green (May 2011)

#12 green (2015)

#12 green (May 2011)

#12 green and created wetland (2015)

Bridge to #18 (May 2011)

Bridge to #18 (2015)

#10 Tee (May 2011)

#10 Tee (2015)

Traver Creek Project Update

On Monday, October 29th, LJ Construction began working at the Leslie Park Golf Course. They pumped down the north pond.

They made a diversion channel to change the flow of Traver Creek while they work on the north pond.

They started stripping topsoil from the area to the west of #14 tee and stockpiling it for use later. This is an area where spoils from the pond will be moved.

Dredging of the pond continued in week 2.

Here you can see the temporary "road" that has been built in order to get the dump trucks and excavators out into the pond.

Some trees have been cut in order to get access to the creek. They will be replaced with native trees and shrubs.

Spoils from the pond are mixed with soil in order to dry the spoils out.

Loading up the off-road dump trucks.

Mixing the spoils near old #14 tee.

Pond Drama

If you have played recently, you may have noticed that the pond on #8 is really low. Upon inspection, we discovered a 4 inch hole in the overflow drain. This drain takes any excess water to Traver Creek. Unfortunately, the leak was about 18 inches below where we would normally want the pond. We got the new plastic drain pipe the other day an d that enabled us to replace the faulty pipe.

Here you can see how much the pond level had dropped (and the new elbow)

After we dug around the old pipe...

we had to cut it.

The old section. You can see the hole, right where the two sections were joined together.

Overflow fixed and waiting for rain to fill the pond back up.

Project Updates

Here are some updates on projects that we have been doing in the last 6 months or so.

The area to the left of #11 green is growing in well. 

You can see where the fairway will go in this picture due to the lighter color of the bentgrass.

The same area at the beginning of April.

Fall of 2011. You can see the pea-stone used as a base.

The area before the drain. It was always wet. We could not use a mower without sinking. Golf balls would often plug in this area as well.

The drainage on #16 is fully open.

The drain lines form the shape of an "F."

The same drain last fall.

Laying out the drain tile. (Fall 2011)

The drain across #11 fairway is also complete.

The bentgrass has been mowed at the same height as the rest of the fairway.

The trench before pipe was added. This picture is looking from the other direction, i.e. toward #13. (Fall 2011)

November 2011 Weather Summary

I noticed an interesting phenomenon this morning while checking the course. In 90% of the bunkers, the snow had melted except over the underground drainage lines. This allowed me to get a visual on where these lines are located. The nice thing about that is it could allow me to find the beginnings of the drainage lines. When constructing bunkers, the drain lines will often have a "clean-out" at the beginning of the line. These "clean-outs" allow someone to easily flush the sand and silt that accumulates in the drainage over time. This may improve the speed at which these bunkers drain rain away.

Here you can see the herringbone pattern of drains in the bunker on #14.

A similar pattern on #12

On #7, I painted a yellow line on the snow to help me trace the drain to the end.

Speaking of rain, we received 4.77 inches of it in November. This brings our yearly total here at Leslie Park Golf Course to 39.42 inches. We had 10 days with over a trace of rain and 8 days with over a tenth of an inch. We had 2 days with over an inch of rain. Those days were the 22nd and 29th.

The high temperature for the month of November, 2011,was 66.4 (The 8th of November) and the lowest temperature recorded was 18.1 on the 18th. It got below freezing on 7 of the 30 days, but the daily high was always above 32 degrees.

The highest wind gust was 42 mph (Nov 9th.)

More Fall Projects

#11 is the scene of most of our projects this fall. You may remember that we built a new tee already. (You can see this tee here)

On the left side of #11 near the green, there has been a continual problem with an area of peat mixed with clay. This area holds water and is impossible to mow and also causes some unfair lies. Here is the area in 2009.

The area in August of 2011.

I went in and removed the peat and clay areas with a backhoe and replaced it with pea-stone. We put in catch basins connected to existing drainage.

We then covered the pea-stone over with about a foot of soil and graded it out to a gradual slope that forces surface water into the catch basins.

This is after we got 1.27 inches of rain last night, hence the puddles.

In the spring, we also had a large issue with standing water on the right side of the fairway, about 250 yards from the green. The water would come out of the woods and collect in a hollow near the tree line. We had so much rainfall this spring that the water would overflow and flow across the fairway. This created a huge mess and cart traffic had to be routed through standing water to play the hole. Earlier in the fall, we put in a catch basin in the hollow and we are now working on connecting the catch basin to existing drainage near #13 tee.

We will be working on trenching across the fairway next week. 

On a different note, today is the last day for golf at Leslie Park for the year. As a reminder, our sister course, Huron Hills will be open until the snow flies. It has been a good year and I hope to see you out on the course in 2012!