Blowing Out Irrigation

Up here in Canada we blow out the irrigation lines with air in the fall to prevent lines from breaking during the freezing weather . I have lots of Irrigation knowledge and was asked by the assistant to give him a hand today. At this course we rent a couple of smaller compressors and hook them in locations at the top of the course to push the water out down the hills  . While we are waiting for delivery of the compressor we will go around key areas top & bottom of hills and pull foot valves out of sprinkler , this way gravity will take care of a lot of areas and speeds things up . Will also open the blow out valves . Our pumping station is near the top of the course . It takes a full day to blow out all the holes but we rent them for 2 days to give the greens and tee's and low areas an extra boost of air . Before we start up we shut off blow out valves and replace sprinkler foot valves . When we are all done the blow outs are left halve open same as the section valves . That way when the ground heats up in the spring it won't build up pressure and break things .

I was asked on Wednesday to help out at my old course to blow their irrigation . I'm a good choice since I spent a lot of time there running almost all the approach sprinklers and was pretty much in charge of irrigation and drainage there in the past . I did do up a nice flow manager program also . The Old super and his youngest son (Ben ) and I managed to get the remainder of the course blown out in a day . Went along very smoothly . We sent Ben  ahead of us and put in the blow out coupler we have at the greens,and opening section valves ,  then it was just a matter of hitting each head down the line getting tee's and greens as we went .  I was quit surprised on how well my old Super ( Brian ) knew his course irrigation wise . There are well over 500 heads and I bet you he knew where 98 % of them where . It was great to be in my old stomping grounds for the day .