Jason Gets Dirty

It’s kind of hard to believe when you look outside today at the beautiful green grass and bright blue sky, but we were covered in snow on Saturday.  When I was getting ready for the minigolf outing that we had that day, I noticed water pouring out of the side of our driving range hill.

We had recently brought up our irrigation which included priming all of our pipes on the golf course with water, so the greens, tees and fairways can be irrigated.  Honestly, we were expecting quite a few leaks since it hadn’t been used much last year, but so far we were in the clear.  No one spoke about it, of course, talking about the fact that you don’t have any irrigation leaks is a sure way to cause one to pop up.  It’s usually a doozie, too.

I learned that this massive stream pouring from the driving range hillside was not melting snow, but rather a big ole’ irrigation leak.  Like us, the pipes were protesting the May snow storm.

On Monday, Jason and Ron got to work repairing it.  First up, digging a hole.

Jason removed the sod and dug up the severely saturated mud until he found the leaky culprit.  Although we had turned our irrigation system off, all of the water from the system that was on this side of the shut off valve was draining through this break in the pipe.  Our driving range is in the valley, so gravity doesn’t do us any favors in the mud department.  The pipes were leaking.

When Jason was a little boy, he helped our grandpa Dale on the golf course.  Grandpa’s favorite piece of equipment was a drag line.  He was constantly dredging out the ponds.  Because Jason was Grandpa’s helper, he got a toy drag line to play with at home.  When Jason was two, he would scoop out muddy water from his kiddie pool with his drag line and dump it in a pile.  It’s a good thing he has so much experience with muddy water.

He and our superintendent, Ron, discussed how they might go about fixing the leak.  The culprit was a joint that had gone bad in the pipe.

They decided they would use a knock on joint because there was no way they would be able to use any glue because of the flow of water that was coming through the break.  In order to install the knock on, they had to cut the pipe.

All of the pipe on the golf course has electrical wire running right along side of it.  Most of it is 220 volt, so you don’t want to make any mistakes.  At the very least, you want to make sure you’re grounded because a little electrical jolt is always good to wake up tired workers.  Sometimes my humor doesn’t write well.  Just know that is a joke.  The getting a jolt to wake up is fun part.  Also the grounded part.  No.  Wait.  I’m trying to say that there is electricity.  Be careful.  If you want to remove hairs and restart your heart, then a little jolt is helpful.  Oh.  I give up.  Luckily, Jason didn’t cut any wires.

Once the pipe was cut, the water came flowing out freely.  Ron and I were kind of hoping that it would be a big massive blast of water.  Not that we wanted Jason to get super dirty or anything, but mostly for its entertainment value.  Who am I kidding?  We thought it’d be really funny to see Jason get blasted with water.

Before committing to the knock on joint, they thought they might try to drain the hole from water using a gas powered sump pump.  They worked to try to get the hole to have less water in it, but the stars simply weren’t aligning.  The sump pump didn’t want to pump and water kept pouring into the hole.

They grabbed a knock on joint and went to work getting it all fixed up.

These are great joints because they don’t require any glue, however, they don’t hold quite as well, so they should only be used in a situation like this were draining all of the water from the hole isn’t a possibility.  They let the dirt dry out for a few days before filling the hole back in.  The dirt still needs to settle some more before they place the sod back on top of the ground under repair.

How about you?  Ever play in the mud when you were a child?  Some people just never grow up.