#13 Dam Repair

This week a brick mason came on Monday to help repair the Dam on hole #13.  As a previous post explained, rushing water during heavy rains has washed off the rock facing on the dam.  You can see in the before and after pictures below it is hard to tell it ever happened!

We also added a layer of rock on the top, as you can see the light brown line of rock on the right side of the wall.  This will help to keep this area from washing out and causing unsteady footing when crossing the wall.  

Frozen

Wednesday morning once the sun came up we noticed we had a problem.  After spraying our pre-emergent herbicide we needed to water the chemical into the soil for it to work effectively.  The water was programmed to run at dusk on Tuesday evening, and stop before the freezing temperatures arrived in the early morning hours.  All was well except one sprinkler head on hole #12 decided to go "rogue" and stick on throughout the entire night.  Once we noticed it was still running water in the morning we rushed to shut off the water, but the damage had been done.  Over 2 inches of ice had formed where the water hit all night, breaking a few tree branches around #12 green.  All in all once the tree branches were pruned back, nothing else was harmed by the ice formations.  This area will take some time to thaw and will no doubt be wet behind #12 green for a few days!

This was the scene at daylight on Wednesday.  You can see the sprinkler running on the left hand side of the picture, getting ready to add another layer of ice to the trees!  The ice was only on the bottom half of the trees, and the tops had no ice and suffered very little damage.  

A look down the creek on #12 shows a pretty neat winter backdrop with all the ice.

A view from the tee box in the afternoon showed exactly what was covered from the sprinkler head!  

January starting out very wet!

      2020 has started out very wet at Marietta Country Club, with the Club recording over 6 inches of rain so far in less than 3 weeks!  When heavy rains fall as in the past few weeks, the creeks and ponds rise very rapidly. This causes a lot of debris such as leaves and sticks to come down the creek from upstream.  The forebay constructed in 2014 has been very helpful in capturing most of the large debris before it enters the pond.  Each year we remove up to 100 cubic yards of material from the upstream side of this wall (or calm side in the picture above) to the first bridge you cross when playing #13.  By removing the debris periodically we can have a "reservoir" to hold more dirt and material the next heavy storms will bring.  A continuous cycle!!!


One problem we are facing with the forebay now 6 years after construction is the rock facade is falling off.  This is due to the heavy water flow when the wall gets overtaken during flooding and heavy rains.  As you see in the picture above, the water will come completely over the top of the dam very rapidly at times. 


This rock facing is coming off both sides of the forebay.  This is showing the backside, or upstream side of the wall.  These areas will only continue to get worse until we install new rock.  We have scheduled a brick mason to come fix the problem on Monday, January 20th.


This photo is a good example of what a normal day at the forebay looks like.  It is easy to see the rock missing from the front.  A lot of work will be done in this area over the next few weeks including dredging the creek and replacing some large boulders, but is all starts with fixing the flat stone facing!

A few bloopers from the Concrete Project!

Believe it or not we had some problems with keeping people off of the concrete after it was poured!  It usually takes at least 12 hours for the concrete to set up in good weather conditions, but in cold weather it takes almost 24 hours.  Fortunately for us, a few of the times when we did have people drive through the wet concrete the crew was notified and was able to fix the imperfections.  Some of the areas in these pictures did have to be re-poured however!  We used caution tape to warn people of the wet concrete, but it proved to be pretty ineffective. 




Here a panel on hole #2 was driven across multiple times!

This long run on #14 fortunately survived without any damage!!!!


This panel on #1 Overlook was the first day we started the project!  Someone rode a bike across the wet panels even though they were roped off with caution tape!  What is a bike doing riding on Overlook in the first place!!!

This area on hole #15 was driven through within 2 hours of being completely finished.  As you can see there is caution tape, and the person drove straight through the tape like it didn't exist!  Fortunately it was very cold that day and the crew was able to run down and refinish the top of the concrete before it dried and nobody will ever know!

Concrete Cart Path Project Finally Completed!

I am happy to say we are all done with the Cart Path repairs!  No more huge trucks and equipment clogging up the pathways!  It has no doubt been a mess in some spots over the last 4 weeks, but it is easy to see and feel the improvement if you drive around the cart paths!  We focused on many different areas, trying to make the ride across all the cart paths as smooth as possible.  All in all it required over 30 concrete trucks to do all this work!  Every bad area on the Overlook 9 was repaired, along with areas on holes #1, #2, #3, #5, #6 Tee, #8 Tee, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, and #17.  Some of the holes listed were only a few small panels, while other holes like #8 and #14 had significant areas repaired.  All of the work made an impact removing broken, bumpy paths and making it a smoother ride around the course!  Below are some pictures of the concrete work over the last 2 weeks.  These photos show a good example of what we had to do during the entire process.  


Here was a common sight, seeing the concrete trucks!  It took over 3 trucks and almost 300 cubic yards of concrete to complete the project!


Here a concrete worker smooths the surface of freshly poured concrete on #1.  Roots from the nearby trees had buckled up this spot in the cart path making a very severe bump in the panels.


Here is the start of the work on hole #8.  You can see in the very bottom of the picture the cart path is very broken and cracked badly.  This run ended up being over 250 feet of cart path continuously, and ran from the blue tee box all the way past the green tee box!



A very busy area to be tearing up!  This services hole #3 as well as hole #8 where the bridges intersect.  We were forced to do this area on a Monday, as well as use fast drying concrete, to be able to ensure carts could still travel through on Tuesday morning!


This picture from the large bridge on hole #3 shows the crew preparing the sight to be formed and poured within the next few hours.  The ornate rock wall was also something we had to work around and fit in smoothly, which took a little work!



This old cart path was very easy to remove because of all the cracks!  This machine was used to remove all the cart paths around the entire property!

Here is a good example of what the cart path on #8 looked like before we removed it!


Here is the same area on #8 tee box after the concrete had been poured.  This crew member is putting the finishing touches on the entire area so it is smooth and drains perfectly.  As you can see they did a really good job of making the rock wall and concrete seem like they went together forever.  We started by pouring these panels and then working our way out, as you can see the crew in the top of the photo working on the freshly poured material.

This large machine was used to haul the old concrete away, and also to bring in the new concrete and dump on site.  This bucket on this machine can hold 2 yards of concrete!  This makes the pouring process much faster and allowed us to do this area in 1 day!  Once the concrete is poured, it is spread out across the entire formed area at a 4-5 inch depth.

Here is another area we improved on hole #14.  On a few different locations we added some new curbing to help keep carts on the path and improve the function of some sharp turns.  This area above always was rutted out by people cutting the corner, so hopefully this will help to keep people on the cart path!