Ending the Year strong at Hermitage Country Club

It is a short holiday week with most of our crew on vacation but we wanted to take advantage of some beautiful weather. With temperatures well above freezing we were able to get the CapillaryFlow installed in the chipping green bunkers. This aggregate concrete is laid out at a 2 inch depth and then just lightly rolled smooth.

The mix comes out of the concrete truck and then brought to the bunker with our dump utility vehicles. The 10 yards of mix is hand shoveled and raked into place.

The mix stacks up nicely no matter the slope. The aggregate will drain at almost 100 inches of water per hour. The idea is that the rain can travel through the fresh bunker sand and then enter the CapillaryFlow and move into the french drain at the bottom. With the water moving through the aggregate, the sand won’t be displaced by any rain like in the past. This means virtually no more washouts, reduced maintenance demand, and extremely consistent bunker play.

We left open sumps at the bottom to yield a deeper sand depth which will help draw water out. One of the benefits of the CapillaryFlow concrete is that it helps maintain some moisture in the sand instead of drying all the way out during arid periods of weather.

The bunkers were covered with plastic to allow the concrete to cure overnight. The covers will be removed tomorrow and sand will start going in after lunch on Friday. The sand will be spread and then tamped down. It will take a few nice rains and a few tampings to get the sand firmed up as it will be fluffy to start off with. Each bunker will have a slightly different sand type. We will welcome feedback on which sand golfers like better, if you can tell a difference at all. This will determine which bunker sand we decide to move forward with when we start renovating the back nine bunkers on the Sabot in February and March.

Enjoy the Holidays and the New Year, we could not be more excited for 2020!

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