Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Sand or Soil in trenches the great debate


Sand or Soil in trenches the great debate
This is always a tricky question and it often has to take into consideration a lot of scope like size of trench, depth of trench, time of year, soil moisture levels, quality of the soil to be used, cost, man hours available, equipment available and much more, since we have a few letters of complaint about the decision to use sand instead of soil I am putting forward the pros and cons sheet we used in deciding to go with sand:
    
            SOIL PROS-

·   Readily available stockpile so little cost to source product
·   Same soil that was originally in the ground

SOIL CONS

·  Contained a lot of stones
·  Very clumpy (not friable) thus hard to work with
·  Gets caught in top of trenches thus creating air pockets , which after rain can collapse leaving a trench that thought filled only quarter filled
·  Hidden safety hazard – in that the trench appears solid but is not.. potential duty of care problem for people who sink it to the trench thinking it to be full but is not
·  Rain or irrigation made very muddy and sticky also soft so mud everywhere, and again a hazard if you stood directly on trench
·  Heavy rain or irrigation  on sloped areas still some wash out as the fine particles went along with the water flow
· The wash off out of the trench to the low areas hard to clean up and made a boggy area where it pooled or settled
· Soil has less heat generation than sand (heat to help couch runners grow into trenches)

SAND PROS –

· Sand will fill trenches from the bottom up to  the top (thus leaving no air pockets)
· Easy to work with, easy to load, and shovel, also can use level lawns to achieve level surface
· No safety problems with a trench collapsing  as when stood on  if it looks filled and solid it is
· Can mix seed in with sand to help stabilize in trench for erosion prevention help
· Sand heats up well thus helping the couch in the fairways to grow into the trenches
· Sand is the preferred growing media for Couch thus will put a lot of root system into trenches (this is why the greens are made of sand not soil)
· A lot cleaner as in no mud tracks and no mud on shoes from walking on the sand
· If after rain some sand washes it is easy to pick up the wash and replace or can be rubbed in to the low area where it has settled and used as topdressing to fill in that hollow
· If irrigation pipe has leak or problem  at joiner or fitting it is much easier to dig up around it if there is sand instead of soil

SAND CONS –

· Costs to buy in
· Heavy rain will wash out trenches on slopping areas

These are the pros and cons that came out of a brain storming exercise with the ground staff and irrigation instillation crew and I think that any reasonable person reading the whole list could come to the same conclusion as we did and that sand is the way to go, accept that there will be some wash outs but after a few top-ups it will grow in fine.I hope this answers the questions to those that have written letters in ,  but take note that if the trenches were wider or not as deep then the pros and cons list could and would have looked different.
So to the next part of the plan with the fairways now picking up the growth rate we would like some volunteers to help us out with topping up the trenches we plan to do this on Monday afternoons from 1.00pm to 2.00 pm if we can get 12 people to help the staff we will be able to get 2 crews going and will get it done over 4 weeks.
Hope this clears some thing up….. till next time keep swinging…pete 

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