Hole 11, Par 6 Tees Renovation

The longest hole in Canada, the par 6, 11th hole had its par 6 tees reconstructed this fall. During the summer we installed our new RV park, and a majority of the dirt that was excavated out of the former driving range, was brought to 11 tee. This tee was not very nice before. It was small and would get run down quite easily. If hole 11 is our signature hole, let's make it signature and be of good quality.

Once all the dirt that could be dumped there was, we then had the owner come in with his large farm John Deere tractor. He rototilled it all so that it was smooth and shaped them into tee boxes. HIs tractor is much larger than ours, and the power from the pro was able to break up all the big sod chunks.

Rototilled soil

We don't have any fancy laser levelling box scarper or anything like that. We make do with the equipment and resources we have on hand, unless absolutely necessary to rent something.

Once the soil was rototilled, it was then packed down using the tractor by driving on it, and pulling a set of harrows behind it to remove any clumps. This worked pretty well. Again, not as great as some of the fancier equipment that can be used, but it worked for us. The next step was installing irrigation lines and heads.

We began by using our 3 point hitch, hydraulic excavator to dig the trench for the lines. We soon found out that this was taking way too long. It is not the fastest piece of equipment. It took about 4 hours to dig less than 80 ft.

3pt hitch excavator

This was one of those times when it was worth it to rent a piece of equipment to improve efficiency. We rented a ride on ditch witch trencher. This machine cost roughly $150 for half the day.

Ditch Witch trencher

With it being a ride on, we finished this 500ft irrigation line in about half an hour. We rented it for half a day, so we trenched a few more things that needed to be done on the course. This was a win for sure. We weren't wasting labour hours to sit on the excavator for couple days. This was well worth the money, and completing other projects with it was great.

Once the lines were trenched, it was time to lay the pipe. We did not do a loop system in this particular area, as it would not work. It was a straight line with 5 heads on it. All 5 heads would not run at once, as we are a manual irrigation control. Once everything was installed, we backfilled the trench and seeded it. This was a fall seeding, so we are waiting to see in the spring how it turns out.