Background
The second, third and sixteenth holes at the Maidstone Club were built on marsh land that a century ago was sand capped. As you can see in the first picture below there is a dark black soil at the bottom of the fairway soil profile which is very poor draining. The poor soil drainage is handicapped further by a high water table from Hook Pond which keeps groundwater around 2’ to 3’ below grade depending rainfall. Drainage into Hook Pond is not permissible and the club prides itself on being a good steward of the unique coastal pond.
Idea
The nearby Bridgehampton Club dealt with similar drainage issues on their low lying holes. The club has several holes abutting roads that shed runoff water on to the course. Their solution involved open surface drains to capture the water into underground vaults where it is the pump up the property and released onto open land to drain out of play.
Materials
EZ Flow pipe in a soil profile, NDS.
For pipe we went with a innovative product well used outside of golf. When compared to traditional methods of gravel and perforated pipe the EZ Flow french drain system we used performs 30% better than gravel, and its prepackaged design saves 50% in labor time/costs associated with installation of gravel. We went with a 4” diameter pipe, that is surrounded by 6” of packing peanut like material for a total of 10” diameter. In total 3,000 linear feet of pipe was installed to drain just over 3 acres.
We topped the pipe with a sand layer from a local supplier. The course material is colloquially termed bank run and is a coarse grained sand. The final layer in our profile was a sandy topsoil blend mixed to hold water for roots in dry spells but drain quickly after a storm.
The vaults the drain lines connect to are precast monolithic concrete to keep groundwater not collected by the pipes out, to reduce wear on the pumps. These structures each have a capacity of roughly 1,500 gallons of water. They are each equipped with two submersible pumps that can provide a combined max output of 290 gallons per minute. All water collected from the system is pumped to the irrigation pond for use when needed. By managing the storm water runoff in this way we are able to reduce the need to pump water from the ground.
Construction Timeline
The project broke ground on November 4th on the second hole with the western drain lines being dug first. The western section was completed and sod was back place by November 16th when work shifted to the eastern end of the hole nearest Hook Pond. These drains lines where completed by Thanksgiving, and on December 6th the vaults where installed for each section.
The second part of this of the project was the work across the road on holes 3 and 16. Work commenced on these drain lines in the third week of January. Work progressed quickly with few delays thanks to mild and dry weather. At this time the vaults on the second hole where connected to the drain lines, the pumps where installed and electrical connections made. For all the work we were assisted by local contractors who the expertise and large equipment to complete this project in a timely manner. By the end of February trenching was completed and just over 1425’ linear feet of pipe was installed. The vault, pumps, and electric were installed the first week of March. We had already seen drainage improvements from having the pipe in the ground, and now it was time to turn on the pumps.
Results
The system was turned on in early April with the irrigation system. The performance was fantastic in handling your average storm these holes used to often lead to a soggy start for days after a rain, and now played as “firm and fast fairways”. When there is a deluge of rainfall the holes do still puddle, as expected, with a completely underground system that depends on the water to travel through the surface to the pipe. The benefit is there is no surface infrastructure in play or designed catched basins that would look out of place. The system in these cases beats our best efforts in the past to clear these holes of water setting up pumps manually. This also is a area where the system can pay for itself as in the past it took 2-3 employees to drain the holes after storm setting up pumps in various areas on these holes. As of Date we have collected XXX,XXX gallons of water for irrigation.
As apart of our drainage plan for holes 2 and 16 we also added a ditch or burn to each that catches the water from the road before it can reach the fairway, you can read about that project here. In the fall of 2022 we drained the other half of 16, for more about that click here.