- Top dressing is counter productive to producing a Performance Bowling Green
- Following the Performance Bowls Green system reduces maintenance costs from day 1.
- Doing too much work on your green can be detrimental to its condition.
- The performance greens program has the long term effect of reducing the work needed on the green.
- Performance bowls greens can be maintained with zero pesticides, another saving.
Tag: finance
The Pursuit of Excellence and…economy.
Now that the new season is upon us, we’ve been getting a lot of enquiries asking two basic questions:
What is the ideal maintenance program to ensure an excellent bowling green surface this year? and…
How can we reduce costs for maintenance without compromising the performance of the green?
Well, although both of these questions are fairly easy to answer, the actual solution depends a lot on what has gone before and at what stage your green is at, in terms of performance at the moment.
The pursuit of excellence on a sensible budget is very much the theme of Performance Bowling Greens.
In the book you will find a step by step blueprint in layman’s terms where John explains the reasons why most bowling greens don’t perform to the required standard, or if they do, why they don’t seem capable of perfoming consistently over the long term.
Also in the book John talks about his philosophy on high performance bowling greens, what makes them and how to achieve a tournament quality green on a reasonable budget, consistently.
John said ” I decided to write this book to detail in layman’s terms the exact formula needed for a great bowling green. A formula that is based on thorough scientific research and experience”
He went on to say: “I also wanted to alert bowling club officials and greenkeepers to the 4 major obstacles that stand in their way, the 4 obstacles that repeatedly stop them from producing the green they desire, so that hopefully they can learn to spot these and avoid them in the future.”
You can get hold of your copy of Performance Bowling Greens here.
Investing in Irrigation-can you afford not to?
Irrigation: cost or investment?
Previously we talked about some of the reasons commonly put forward for not watering bowling greens. I also shared with you, my amusement that so many clubs fail to mention irrigation or lack of it when looking for an explanation for the poor quality or condition of their greens; even though it’s very obvious. They will use just about every other aspect of bowling green maintenance as a reason for poor performance.
Now we come to the cost of irrigation; and I am not talking about the cost of installing a system, but merely the cost of the water being applied on any given night.
This is another big reason or excuse that I hear a lot about:
“we can’t water any more because it costs a fortune”
Now of course there will be variations (slight) around the country and also from system to system, but here is my 10 second rundown on the cost of water for irrigation:
- As we saw previously a typical system will put out 1mm of irrigation water for every 2 minutes of system run time.
- A typical system will also put out 150 litres per minute; so to calculate the cost per mm of irrigation we do this:
- 2 (minutes) X 150 (litres) X 4 (sprinkler heads) = 1200 litres/mm
That’s to achieve 1mm over the whole green.
As 1200 litres is 1.2 m3 you simply have to multiply the irrigation requirement in millimetres by your cost per m3 and then by 1.2
Example:
- Water balance sheet shows we need to replace 15mm of moisture loss.
- Multiply 15 (mm) X 1.2 (m3) X £/m3
- 1.2 (m3) X £0.90 = £1.08/mm of irrigation over entire green.
I’ve used 90p as an average cost, but you can find your own local charge on your water bill or by phoning the water company.
The question is whether you see irrigation as a cost or an investment in the future of your green.
Irrigation Running Costs and Bowls Club Success
A funny time of year to be talking about irrigation but it is a surprisingly popular search term for the site.
So what are the costs of running irrigation on your green?
Well as you would imagine this can easily turn into a “how long is a piece of string?” type of debate. That’s due of course to the plethora of different irrigation systems around the country and of course the weather.
However, what we can do is look at some basic irrigation facts and then, armed with some key information from your irrigation hardware and utility bills; we can make a good estimate of the costs of running the system.
First let’s look at fixed costs:
These are primarily the cost of maintaining the system after its in place. On newer systems this will probably take the form of the cost of a maintenance contract with a qualified irrigation engineer; as the system gets older this will also have to have an element of contingency planning for new parts etc.
Then we look at the variable costs such as electricity and water:
Where most of your irrigation is carried out on automatic (recommended) the variable cost of labour is negligible. So we need to know how much a unit of electricity costs us and we can get that information from the bill, same with the water costs.
Armed with the cost of water per m3 and the cost of electricity per kw/h we can then work out the actual true cost of running irrigation on our greens.
Pump Outputs are typically expressed in litres per minute.
However, for the majority of systems that are configured as Read more
Bowls Club Success Manifesto
Speaking to club officials as I go around the countryside, it’s never long before the conversation turns to the difficulties in retaining members, keeping the club afloat and general club survival issues.
Of course, the time of year makes it all the worse, as clubs going into the winter with financial difficulties are obviously in a delicate condition. It’s never clear how many members will pay their subs again and want to come back next year.
For many clubs it doesn’t look great this year; the combination of the already prevalent factors related to the state of the game with the very strange series of weather events (very cold and prolonged winter, followed by a very cold and very dry spring, followed by a very hot and dry spell of weather for many of us in June and July) has left a lot of clubs with worries about their survival.
This has led me to change around my plans recently and prioritise my work to make sure you have access to the right kind of information at the right time.
So, although we said that our new eBook: Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround would be available at the end of August, we have delayed this until the 25th September, so that we could bring forward the release of our new Manifesto for Bowling Club Success.
I know, I know it’s a bit of a mouthful, but I think “manifesto” describes this new guide most accurately as it provides clubs with a document that can be adopted and then adapted into a declaration of your intention to work on a plan to rejuvenate your club’s fortunes.
Our Manifesto for Bowling Club Success includes 4 main sections as follows:
Part 1. Accepting the New Order of the Game
Part 2. Club Turnaround
Part 3. Long Term Strategic Planning
Part 4. How to Imbed Best Practice
It is available FREE now. Just click here to access your copy; and please let us know what you think and how you plan to use it in your club.