May 18

We are almost ready to start sodding on holes 7, 8, & 9. Probably start that next week. Shortly after we will be filling bunkers with new white sand, and then final preping for sprigs.

Here the contractor is final grading with a box blade


Here's some what of what it will look like after being boxed. He'll just keep swirling around until it is super smooth


Remember how small the old red and gold tee on 16 was? I wanted to give a perspective of how large the tees is now so I took this pic of my cart in the middle of it.


After the contractor finished with the rock walls for the tees, I asked him to see if it would be possible to dig out the lake since as you can see it is almost completely dry. Here is a pic of the "test" dig to see what he could do.


In the end he was able to excavate about 4 feet down, right to solid rock. Here is a series of pics showing the process. Careful, these are messy!!!!





One of the major objectives on 16 in the project was tee enlargement, which we did, and cutting down the front of the fairway to make it easier to make it over the lake. We also needed dirt to make a haul road out into the lake so we could reach the remaining unexcavated portions. So, I had the contractor take this big bull dozer and just push the dirt out into the lake on the cut line. Then, as the excavator finished digging out the lake, it just dug out all of the haul road too. Here is a series of pics to show the process.





Then once the material is excavated, the lake edge looks like this. Also in this pic you can see the new rock wall that is being made right at the top of the high water mark. We will still have that "ramp" look up to the fairway as promised. The top of the wall will be 3 feet below the top of the fairway.


Here's another pic of the wall, just a little higher.


Back on the front side, its time for some new landscaping on the holes that are about to get grass. Specifically, time for the big trees. Remember back in January when I root pruned all of the big black olives and oak trees. Well, its time to give them a new home. If properly root pruned, transplant is a snap. As long as you can pick up these beasts that is.


Here is pic of some new palms added between 7 & 8. Last week I had 100 palms planted on 7, 8, & 9.


Add a nice big black olive....and now you have instant seperation between holes.


Here's another pic of some new tree landscaping around 8 tees


Here the contractor is spreading out all of the new dirt on 18 fairway


And here is the contractor picking out the rock from the fill dirt on 18. Holes 13, 14, 16, 17, & 18 have all the rock.


Here the contractor is digging out the old "elephant burial ground." This area's dirt was not suitable to use on the course, so it being buried to generate good material.


Notice the cut in elevations from the excavator to the ground below. The whole area will be cut and planted in marsh grasses.


A couple of loads made it out to the course, so I asked the contractor to scrap it up and haul it to the bury pits. Notice how dark it is compared to the pile in the background.


If you are a resident in Big Cypress on the north side of the Clubhouse, you're going to be glad I replaced this old pipe. It used to drain the streets into the pond on 13 tee. I think it got a case of metal termites!!!



Stay tuned, more to come.

May 12

A lot has happened since the last posting. Holes 6-18 are stripped and buried, 7-9 are completely drained, 6-9 are shaped, shaping on 10-13 will start tomorrow. 14 & 18 will start getting cut and filled (this is the process of just moving mass quantities of dirt around with out shaping it).

Here's a progressionary clip set of the new rock walls on 16







Here is some pics of the shaping work taking place on the new tees on 6.


The shaper is working on the front left corner of the 6 white tee. The new littoral planting around the left side of the teeing ground will give you and feeling of being high off the ground.


This pic shows how far the golf course was on Mooring Park's land. The stakes on the left are the property boundry, and you can see the heads taken off on the right. The chain link fence will be removed and the fence line will be re-established on the property line with some of their new extruded aluminum fence. It will look first class!


I had to post this pic.....sometimes the ground isn't has hard as you think, even for a bull dozer. This machine is stuck in 5 foot of mud, then just sank. Its not just a simple thing of pulling it out as the muck creates a suction around the machine. You have to dig it out to break the suction, then pull it out with something even bigger!


Here the crew is hard at work clearing off the strippings to the bury pits.


Look at all of the machines in this pic. This is why the contractor is moving so fast on stripping the ground.


My biggest challenge right now is staying ahead of the stripping crew. This pic is of my crew digging up wires and burying them deeper because of the new contours of the course. What used to be deep enough, sometimes isn't any more.


The "Elephant Burial Graveyard" is officially cleared out. It took some serious muscle to get all of the "stuff" shred up. This machine isn't for digging, it has a special pair of cutters on the end so it can slice right through 24" logs no problem.



After the "Slicer" cuts the big stuff into managable pieces, the loader with a claw rake grabs the stuff and puts into the shredder.


And out the business side comes what's left....


Here's the whole production


As we get closer to grassing you will see the water being run on the course. We have to try and turn the dessert back into a place where grass will grow. It takes a lot of water to "wet" the soil once it dries out completely.


That's it for now. Stay tuned for more updates to come.

Cinco de Mayo

Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. One thing that I have learned, is that when you think you're done pushing dirt during construction, go get a shovel....its time to move it again. It seems there is no end to the procession of scrape, load and haul these days. Actually that's great news as the contractor is moving fast in stripping. At the end of today 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, & 18 are completely stripped. By end of tomorrow 7, 8, & 9 will be completely done with drainage installs. Half of 10 & 13's drainage is done also. Although we were planning on grassing 6 holes about this time in the planning stages, it really is going to be towards the end of the month and we will be grassing at least 8 holes, and maybe a couple more might be done by the time the grassing guys get done with the first 8.

Here is the dozer pushing up the piles on 14


Here is the procession of haulers. You can see why they have air conditioned cabs. These guys are hauling from 14 fairway to 18 fairway bury pit.


Here's 18's bury pit. They back the loaded trucks over the freshly pushed in materials to compact it so hopefully there is little to no settling.


Hey look, its a new water hazard on 17 fairway. This pit will be large enough to contain the strippings from 15, 16, & 17 when it is finished be excavated


On the front side the shapper is finishing all the little touches to the course. Here is the new blue tee on #7 flatten out.



Part of the project is to enlarge the tees on 16. Here the contractor is selecting the "good" rocks to use in the construction of the walls.


Then the rocks get loaded into the trucks and delivered to the work site


Then...its not a slow boat to China, its a slow - enormously large earth mover crawl to China


Then its time to start "Rock'n Out" We actually had a rock so big that this big moster machine couldn't lift it into a truck, so we just pushed into a 10' deep hole and buried it deep.


Wanna know what some of my days look like...sometimes I'm the guy running the machines - and its actually fun!


Here the contractor is teaching his crew the proper way of setting the catch basins to grade. Notice the level, these guys are very thorough.


This has nothing to do with the project, I just wanted Tony & Shawn to be jealous of the big fish I caught! Its a 34" snook caught in Estero Bay two weeks ago.


Stay tuned....more to come. PS>>>the time stamps on these posting is west coast time....its actually 10 pm here.

May 1

I have to say, things are going very well. We are "Rocking" & rolling along. This week it finally hit me. During the planning phase of this process, everyone keep telling me that there is too much rock here, and the going will be tough. That's true if you try to run a trencher through the ground. However, if you use an excavting machine like this one you'll hit some rock, but be able to dig it out. Here, we were only bury irrigation control wires. We weren't putting any pipe in the ground.


Here is an picture of the start of a new bury pit on 18 fairway


And a day later you have this......


As I was driving around the other day I saw this white stuff on the ground, its salt from the irrigation water that has moved to the surface through capilary action. Its just like the grade school science experiment where you disolve the table salt in a glass of water and then let the water evaporate. Well, when we let the ground completely dry, like it is now, it leaves us with all of the salt left over from the effluent water.


As part of the project, a new discharge pump was installed to drain the North side of the property. Here is the 26 yr old pump on its way to the fabrication shop.


Here is the new one, installed. You can see how I had the discharge pipe angled down and buried so I can landscape around the pump shelter.


We finally got all of the breaks repaired and were able to do some dust control. I'm very sorry for those home owners on 10 & 11, thank you for your understanding.


At the end of on month the contractor has stripped 7, 8,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, and started 14. Drainage is complete on 7, most of 8, half of 10, and half of 13. 7 fairway is graded and shaped, 8 & 9 fairways are filled and waiting to be graded. All of the bury pits are filled on 11 & 12. Next on 10, 11, 12 will be filling and shaping.