What do you all do in the winter?

Winter is an extremely important time for the maintenance department.  Maintenance departments take this time to service and thoroughly clean the equipment, restore the cutting units, tree work, irrigation upgrades, as well as projects when weather permits.  Last year we made considerable upgrades to the maintenance shop.  Like any structure, such as a house, we needed to address painting, caulking, insulation, plumbing, etc.  We also worked on making the shop more organized.  This included making pallet shelving in order to free up floor space. 

Back to the equipment.  As many of you have noticed, Doctor Loewen has made considerable investments with regard to equipment.  Our maintenance staff is extremely grateful because these investments have made us more effective and efficient.  We intend for these tools to be effective throughout their depreciation period and in some instances longer.  So, in addition to our preventative maintenance standards set by our Equipment Manager, Dave Hacker, it is necessary to have a comprehensive winter overhaul program as well.  This may include bearings, belts, tires, brakes, etc, and this requires the assistance of the entire maintenance crew because Dave's winter is spent sharpening reels and overhauling cutting units.  Let me put it this way, our hours in the winter time are spent wisely.

Here are some pictures to illustrate what our winter involves inside the shop when it's too cold to work outside.

Equipment Manager, Dave Hacker, inspecting a reel.

                                         

Pallet shelving built by John Robinson last season to create more floor space

This is our state of the art grinder.  This was purchased last year and Dave uses it to grind our reels to manufacturer specs.

Facility Manager, Sam Bannister, putting the finishing touches on our new tee markers.

We completely sandblasted and repainted the pump platform.  It was in pretty bad shape.  The guys did an excellent job.  They didn't like that sandblasting either.

Inaugural Blog

Welcome to the Reflection Ridge Maintenance blog.  I thought this would be a more effective way to communicate what our department does on a daily and weekly basis beyond what we are able to convey in the monthly newsletter. 

During my twenty plus years on the maintenance side of golf course management I have not only witnessed the evolution of how we maintain golf courses, but also how the golfing customer views the maintenance of their home course .  Our height of cuts are much lower, the equipment has improved dramatically from a technology standpoint, and golfer expectations have become more demanding.  Our profession has become dynamic and we feel this media will allow us to enlighten the RRGC member what we are doing to satisfy our customers.

Granted, the basics are still the same.  Turf needs water, air, nutrition and sunlight to sustain itself, however, the conditions with regard to height of cut, rounds per year, and desired playing conditions have intensified our management practices beyond the basics.  We will update the blog to keep everyone abreast of projects, course conditions, as well as daily operations.  Furthermore, we will use the multi-media aspects this blog site provides to illustrate our management practices as well as give additional insight into our profession.


Sincerely,
Stewart E. Hanson (Stew)
Golf Course Superintendent
Reflection Ridge Golf Club