More Winter Activities

As is my style, I have not been keeping up on my commitment to explain some of our winter tasks so I'll try to remedy that now. Part of our time is spent primping and/or fixing the golf course accessories (i.e. ball washers, benches, garbage cans, etc., etc.). Mostly this is pretty mundane stuff so I'll pick the one which maybe slightly out of the ordinary. One of the items that everyone gets up close and personal with every time they golf is the flag stick. With all the handling that occurs throughout the season the flag can look pretty beat up in a short time.

Chipped flag pole

Purely by trial and error we have realized some brands withstand the groping better than others but eventually they all reach a point where they need painting. We've tried touching up spots but the paint never matches so this time out we strip the poles.

Spinning pole and
belt sander

The process we ultimately went with involved spinning the pole on an electric motor and sanding off the paint with a belt sander and 60 grit paper. We finished off with a very quick hand job using a finer grit to take care of the fiberglass slivers. It took about 10 minutes per pole to remove most of the paint.

Sanded
Pole

We used the same machine to paint the poles with three coats of whites and two coats of red to give the barber pole sort of look.

Original pole on left
Refinished pole on right

Replacement on these poles is $40 to $50 (or at least it was the last time we bought some!). Materials to do 24 poles was less than $100. Each pole from start to finish took about one hour so 3 complete days in all. Including wages refinishing was about 30 to 40 percent cheaper than buying new. The big unknown is how well the paint will stand up. We are hoping to get up to 2 years between paint jobs....time will tell. I guess the other thing is now that we've done it once we should be quicker since most of the bugs have been worked out.

February Update

There is still any where from 16 to 20" of snow out on the course but I'm starting to think about Spring. Last week I dug down and pulled some plugs from known bad spots on greens with a history of sometimes being funky at the start of the year. One week later and things seem OK. I'm a little leery to suggest everything is "peachy" but I am optimistic.

Back #9 Green

Same plug 10 days later

I've sampled three other greens (6,8, and 13) and they look pretty similar to the above pictures.