Rainy Day = Equipment Maintenance

It is days like this where we spend our time working on the upkeep of our equipment.  We will do all of the service on our equipment such as oil changes, filter changes, and other hourly service.  It looks like the rain will stop this afternoon and get windy.  We will pull the tarps off the field again and hope the area drys out.  Looks like next week will be promising for some serious renovation.

Wire Tracking and Covering the Field Again

With the threat of rain, we decided to cover the drainage area on Field E again.  Our hopes are that we can remove it on Friday afternoon so as to have it ready for Monday morning.  The process to finish should take about a week.  Now, this time of year we are struggling to fight against Mother Nature.  We did have the tarps off for about two full days.  The addition of them seems to work and keep us ahead of the game.  I would use them on any exposed winter work.

.  The dogs, Heidi and Brutus, have been enjoying the run of the grounds.  The mild winter has allowed them to be outside with us daily.

 Heidi is a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.  She is about five years old.

Brutus is a Chocolate Lab.  He is about 2 years old.

Mike, our Sports Turf Technician has been busy the last few days troubleshooting the irrigation system.  He worked with the Irrigation Tech. from Atlantic Irrigation on finding our ground faults in the wire.  We discovered that we lost 5 decoders, the communication system with in the irrigation controls, to a possible lightning storm this past Fall.  We also discovered that some of the wires were not correctly installed during the original construction.  He is now spending the day tracking the power wire around the campus.  This gives us the ability to update our "As Builts" as well as know where this wire and the main irrigation line run thoughout campus.  From the photos above, the yellow box connects to the wire in the ground and then the "wand" is used to follow that current that is running through the wire via the box.

Joe and John are continuing the tree trimming.  Joe had to remove one of the trees due to the improper planting techniques.  The bottom 3/4 of the trunk was rotted and wet.  This is a direct response by the tree from being planted too deep. 

First Snow of 2012 and tarping Field E

Saturday saw our first snow of the 2012 year.  It is great that it took this long to see the first one.  The campus recieved about 3 inches of snow followed by some ice.  Today we are experiencing some warmer temperatures and rain.  We ended up covering the area on Field E with some tarps.  The idea is that we can reduce the amount of precipitaion and freezing so we can continue working by the end of the week.  Below are some photos of the field and of the snow removal process.  Oh what a joy.

Winter Prunning

Joe our Horticulturalist and John a Grounds Member are busy this winter doing their annual prunning.  This is the time of year to prune the evergreens that you might have on your property.  Joe whom is a Certified Aborist takes great pride and care in maintaining the plant material here at EA.  Both he and John are valued employees.  Here are a few shots of them in action.

Here are some photos from our field drainage renovation project

To give a brief description... we had the area stripped, tilled, and lazer graded by Todd Vanek and King Sports Turf.  Then the ground froze, it rained, and now it is a sloppy mess.  We should be up and running as soon as the ground drys.  Stay tuned!

STMA Conference

Today is the start of some important professional conferences.  Today I will attend the Maryland Turfgrass Conference and listen to some presentations on sports turf specific topics.

Tomorrow I fly out for Long Beach, California to attend the STMA Conference.  This is a very educational and professional building conference that I look forward to attending each year.  I will post a run down from each class in the evenings.  Stay tuned.

Winter Field Work at EA

This week starts the new renovation of our girls soccer field.  We will be stripping out areas of 60x100 in front of the goal mouths and a 40x70 area along the sideline.  In the goal mouth areas we will be installing drain lines that are on three foot centers.  From there they will be back filled with pea gravel, sand, and then  the area will be graded with topsoil and then sodded.  The sideline area will be graded with topsoil and sodded too.  This project will complete our winter work and pictures will follow as the process goes on for the next few weeks.

The Winter Field Work at EA

We have just finished up some of our winter sod projects here at EA. 

Our baseball field was reframed.  We removed four feet of sod from the inside and outside of the skinned area.  From there we reshaped the appearance of the skinned area to be more of a "modern look."  Before resodding we added an irrigation line to irrigate just the skinned area.  This gives us the ability to keep our skinned surface playable without having to man it with a hose every few hours to keep the proper moisture levels.  We then added some infield mix, lazer graded, and covered the skinned surface for the winter.  Our goal is to have a quick spring opening for our student athletes. 

Our softball field was also reframed.  We stripped 4 feet of existing sod from around the entire skinned surface.  This allowed us to move the playing surface back to its original size.  We actually shrunk the skinned surface by 8 feet around the back arc.  There was not a need to add infield mix because of the amount that we displaced.  The field was resodded and will be covered today so that we will be ready for a timely spring opening.