Scott Vlahos manages the maintenance of the Indian Hills Golf and Country Club in Riverside, CA. Golf course irrigation systems are subject to the clogging of their plumbing systems and especially the irrigation spray heads and local filters. A clogged local filter can stop a whole leg of the irrigation process. Mr. Vlahos recently decided to revisit the situation, and after much research, selected Tekleen to provide a new self-cleaning filtration system. This would cut down tremendously on the labor costs of manually keeping a large golf course irrigation system free from debris and in good working order.
Because of the special situation at Indian Hills, with the water reservoir located on a hill above the course, Mr. Vlahos needed a company that would visit his location to gain first hand appreciation for the layout, and then solve this issue. Since the filtration system might be required to recycle the cleaned wastewater back into the reservoir, the problem that stood out was getting the water back up the hill without using an expensive pumping system. Gideon Brunn, CEO of Tekleen, visited the golf course to assess the situation and offered his expertise to solve the problem. Additional reasons for selecting Tekleen system filters included their stainless steel construction, fewer moving parts, and easy maintenance.
The system filter units have been placed above ground in rough areas where they do not interfere with the golf games. Two of these self-cleaning system units have been installed, a 6” filter model ABW6-LP rated to 800 gpm and an 8” filter model ABW8-P rated to 1,320 gpm. The system units are protected by fencing and a cover. The water pressure from the downhill flow from the hillside reservoir is adequate to run the self-cleaning features.
Since the Tekleen system produces very little wastewater, it is allowed to flow out of the filters onto lawn areas instead of being pumped uphill to the reservoir. The wastewater drains out of the filters into a system of perforated barrels that slow the wastewater drainage onto the lawns. So far this has not created any problems, such as ground saturation or surface pooling. A system of buried drains is currently being planned to manage the runoff in a more permanent way.
The Indian Hills golf course currently uses its original hydraulic system installed in the 1960’s. This kind of system is very sensitive to the effects of debris. It includes a great deal of hydraulic tubing. This system uses a network of 14 hydraulic controllers that go out to the irrigation heads that are outfitted with a series of small local filters. Previously when a clog caused a system shutdown, simply locating the problem area was time consuming. These small filters would have to be manually cleaned, and cleaned very frequently, to protect the hydraulic network. However, with the self-cleaning Tekleen system filters in place, these small filters remain clean, and the life of the hydraulic system is extended. The Tekleen filters have resulted in a huge labor saving which Mr. Vlahos describes as “awesome.”
Additionally, because of the self-cleaning Tekleen filters, Mr. Vlahos is able to run a drip irrigation system which previously could not have been considered. Drip irrigation emitters are subject to the same clogging issues as spray heads. The Tekleen system will keep drip irrigation systems cleaner as well.
With both types of irrigation systems, the water source and the type and size of debris will determine the optimum filter mesh.