The fairway has been topsoiled, it is being tracked in, and the view is clear. No more piles of dirt in this area.
John, our chief of drainage had his last day today, so it's Andreas, the lone guy left on-site to put the remaining pieces back together.
Busy day. Topsoil was finished being spread around fairway 1, John and Bessim were installing drainage in the waste bunker right of green 2, and the men's tee on hole 2 was being ringed with topsoil.
Rootzone (rasentragchicht) is a mix of sand and organic matter. In our case it is 80% sand and 20% peat moss mixed a little by excavator and then run through a screen. Then it's brought to the prepared greensite and spread by mini-excavator. In America, 18 greens, 600 square meters in size can cost $320,000 for the rootzone alone... without installation. Ours is a bit cheaper as we are using quality sand excavated from the pond.
The site is drying out slowly, and work is moving forward. The drainage crew has been busy on the second hole, having completed the drains in the green, today they put drainage in the long bunker to the left of the green, installed the exit pipe, and shaped the bank of the bunker; nice job guys. They would love to start on the large waste area to the right, but it's a little to wet at the moment. Tomorrow they'll most likely be on fairway 1 and Green1.
ived, and the first tons of material have made their way through the machine. More on that in future blogs.
Sketches comparing the two methods.
We are working on the 3rd and 4th holes. Replacing topsoil along the right of the 3rd, creating the drainage swale from the pond to the wetland. We expect it to be dry 99% of the time.
This is a photo of the 2nd part of the par-5 3rd. Tomorrow I'll post a sketch of how it will look like. The autobahn ausfahrt is the light colored section to the left. I was planning a bunker in this area, and the way the sand piled up, and where I pushed a pathway for the bulldozer has it looking a whole lot like Hell Bunker at St. Andrews Old.
This was the final day of heavy lifting. No more major excavating... which should make Richard at Poetter a happy camper! We scraped out the wetland (biotop) left of the 4th hole, and drove all the material to a section of buffer wall along the road. I joked it looks like an exit (ausfahrt) for the autobahn. Tomorrow it will be rough shaped.
Today was a day of digging, loading, driving and dumping. We started with soil for one of the buffer walls on the 3rd, then sand to cap the 2nd fairway, and finally sand for another section of Buffer Wall on the 3rd.
The subgrade for the 3rd green has been shaped, the outer contours mostly tied into the green, and the next step is to cut the bunkers set 15-meters before the green.
We are creating a Constructed Wetland (Biotop) stretching from the tees on the 4th to the corner of the dogleg. It will be about 170-meters long, 100-meters at its widest, and roughly shaped like a wedge. The deepest points will be -1.5 meters.
These are Conceptual Illustrations of the second half of the 3rd hole. Below are the refinements to the grading plan. The wetland (biotop) has been expanded, a mound added to the right of the 3rd fairway, the fairway bunker scheme formalized.