Golf Course Operators May Need Less Water Than They Think, UF Researchers Say

Source(s):
Grady Miller gmiller@mail.ifas.ufl.edu, 352-392-1831 ext. 375
Michael Dukes mddukes@ufl.edu, 352-392-1864 ext. 107

View Photo
View Photo

GAINESVILLE, Fla.— Florida golf courses could cut their water use by as much as 20 percent and still keep their fairways green, a new study by University of Florida researchers suggests.

But with golfers increasingly demanding verdant fairways year-round, the researchers say, golf course managers are often afraid to scale back their water use.

“They’re always aware of the fact that they could be fired for having an unhealthy-looking course,” said Grady Miller, an associate professor of turfgrass science at UF’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences. “The clientele in this business is very demanding. Every golfer wants a course that looks at least as good as his own lawn.”

Miller and two of his colleagues, UF assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering Michael Dukes and graduate assistant Nick Pressler, studied irrigation techniques on five golf courses in Marion, Lake and Orange counties in Central Florida. The work was funded by a grant from the St. John’s River Water Management District.

In one experiment, the UF researchers took over management of a few holes on each of the courses. Then they cut back the amount of water used on each hole. And they found that they could reduce water application by as much as 20 percent before the grass on any of the holes began to look unhealthy.

Golf course operators could save still more water, the researchers say, by conducting regular audits to find gaps in their sprinkler coverage – gaps that are usually due to simple maintenance problems.

“The bottom line is that water audits at golf courses are not done very often,” Miller said. “It’s sort of like buying an expensive sports car and never having it tuned for maximum performance.”

Irrigation experts have long known that the most efficient sprinkler systems are the ones that distribute water the most evenly across the entire area being irrigated.

To understand why, just think of a football field where 10 small, stationary sprinklers are laid out in an even pattern, covering the entire field. When the sprinkler system is turned on, some areas may get more water than others, but the entire field gets at least some water. Now imagine the same football field with half the sprinklers taken away – leaving much of the field without direct sprinkler coverage. To get water to those areas, a groundskeeper would have to overwater the area covered by the sprinklers in order to get a little water to seep into the area not covered by the sprinklers.

“Basically, when people irrigate, they’re watering to satisfy the needs of the driest area,” Miller said. “If your irrigation system isn’t distributing uniformly, reaching that driest area can take a lot of water.”

Using data from “catch cans” – water collection cans placed in a grid on a golf course – irrigation experts can measure how well a sprinkler system is distributing water. The result is usually expressed as a percentage number called “distribution uniformity” or DU.

Perfect distribution – a DU of 100 percent – can’t be achieved except in laboratory conditions, the researchers say. But according to industry standards, a DU of 75 percent is excellent for a golf course, while a DU of below 50 percent is poor enough to warrant an analysis of a sprinkler system to see if something is broken.

The UF researchers conducted catch-can audits on the five Central Florida golf courses. They found an average DU of 50 percent on fairways, 57 percent on tees and 60 percent on greens.

And when they looked for reasons why the distribution was so low, they found that maintenance and installation issues were largely to blame – issues such as sprinkler heads that were tilted or unable to rotate.

“A lot of irrigation problems are due to maintenance and installation issues that are pretty easy to correct,” Miller said.

As high-visibility water users – operating large sprinkler systems that fling water over dozens of acres – golf course operators have come in for growing criticism from Florida residents concerned about possible future statewide water shortages.

But for now, water is plentiful and cheap in Central Florida. That makes it difficult for golf course managers to reduce their water use, the researchers say.

“They’re using water like an insurance policy,” Miller said. “If insurance is cheap, and the risks are great, you buy as much insurance as you can.”

Managers are more willing to risk an unhealthy-looking course in Western states, where water regulations are often tighter and water is more expensive, the researchers say.

And there are restrictions on golf course water use in Florida, too. Golf course managers are required to use treated wastewater to irrigate their courses where it is available; one of the five courses in the study used treated wastewater. Other golf courses typically pump their own water from wells, under permits that set limits on just how much water each golf course can use.

Those limits don’t apply to the millions of Florida homeowners who use sprinkler systems to keep their lawns green – homeowners who, according to the UF researchers, use far more water than golf course operators.

“At least golf course operators have limits on the amount of water they can use,” Dukes said. “Homeowners can use as much as they want to buy, and in many cases it comes from the drinking water supply.”

Dukes is currently conducting a two-year study of the lawn-watering habits of about two dozen Central Florida residents, which is scheduled to be complete in late 2004.

-30-

0

Avatar photo
Posted: October 7, 2003


Category: UF/IFAS



Subscribe For More Great Content

IFAS Blogs Categories