Update: #9 and #18 Drainage Concerns

I’m sure you’ve noticed we haven’t been able to make much progress on either #9 or #18.  This doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy continuing to solve the problems in these areas.  As we’ve been investigating the drainage issues, we’ve discovered old drainage on top of more old drainage on top of even more drainage.  Some of the lines are functioning to a point, but their outlets are severed so they are just acting as catch basins holding water with nowhere to go.  We have come across some 20+ year old hand drawn drainage diagrams in the Turf Care Centre that at least give us an idea of what we’re dealing with, but like I said, they aren’t of much use to us since the old drainage lines are no longer functioning properly.  We located 4 old drainage outlets alone on #18 approach that had nothing but a trickle of water coming from them during and after yesterday’s heavy rainfall.

Here is a photo taken after yesterday's heavy rainfall:

non-functioning old outlet near a newer outlet functioning properly

We cannot finalize a plan to address the drainage issues until we are confident we have discovered all the old drainage that is causing us problems.  I wish I could say there was a quick and easy solution to fixing these problems, but with something as important as drainage, shortcuts will only result in future problems that will cost at least double to fix.  Needless to say, this is a great time of year to identify drainage concerns, but it is not the ideal time of year to be fixing them as the saturated conditions make it very difficult to do so.   

In the meantime, we will continue to pump the surface water from these areas as we create a plan to properly address and fix the issues.  Our drainage contractor, TDS, will be involved in developing the right solutions, as will our drainage engineers, Kelly-Ami.  Both contractors will be in Vancouver in the coming weeks for a drainage project at Capilano, so they will make a site visit to share their expertise.  We must be very careful not to compromise the recently installed drainage, therefore it is paramount that both TDS and Kelly-Ami are involved.  It's much more complex than simply installing drainage tile where we see surface water.

Again, we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we works towards properly addressing and fixing these problems.