1/23/2013 12:01 PM
Scotty!!! Hope things are well up on the other side of the cheese curtain! Thought I'd share with you my experience on all three methods. I've done a full course drill n fill (4x) and once with the dryject, only a demo with the maximus.
Drill n Fill- I feel this is probably the best method of getting a consistent channel of sand down through the green, the bit drills the hole and the sand is injected right in after the bit is pulled out. I have see these channels benefit our greens with root depth as well as pulling moisture from the surface. A thing I wonder though about DnF is the "glossing" off of the hole and whether or not then that water that gets in the channel can move laterally out of the channel and through the profile as good to our XGD. There is more labor involved in DnF as you have debris to pick up from the green, which maybe is a good thing in that you are removing some of the native and replacing in sand vs dryject where you are just packing sand into the native already there. For us to do 17 greens, didn't do our 5 usga it took a full 12 hour day plus another 5 hour day. So you need to be sure you have a good two days where play can be interupted. We used 7/8" bits and with predominantly Poa greens it took some time for them to heal. If I am to do it again I'd do like we did when we regrassed and go through with the Drill n Fill first then come across the green with the procore for the normal aerification. I think this will help distract from the larger holes more plus whatever bent you have I think you are promoting it to move laterally into those voids. Needs are like the others, dry sand and preferrably a dry day. In all I feel the 4 years we've done it here it has been a benefit.
DryJect- we did last August. I chose to do this instead of pulling cores on the newly grassed greens and not have open voids for Poa seeds to get into and germinate. We did it in August as well so the bent had ample weather to heal quickly. Carried out on a Monday and could barely tell come Friday, greens still rolled great. Less labor intensive as there wasn't material to clean up just need to keep machines filled with sand. Unfortunately, the day we did it here this past summer was the one day we received rain all day long. Made for a bit of a mess as well as a long day. Machines plugged and we weren't able to really do our finish work of rolling and dragging the greens afterwards. I think if we could have carried those processes out I would have been happier with the finished product. I was seeing our channels getting down to that 5-6" rain but as someone mentioned earlier moisture content in the soil can determine how your channels are getting created and filled. I really like the "spidering" ability of the sand injected rather than that smooth vertical channel created by the DnF.
Maximus- only did a demo this summer. This process really needs adequate conditions to be performed, mostly moisture content in greens. It does do a great job of getting the sand blasted in the profile and does reach that 7-8" rain if your conditions are ample. The one thing I noticed with this though was it did leave the ground a little more shifty, we rolled after wards and then mowed the next day resulting in some scalping of the entry holes and surrounding area. Not sure if that is because conditions weren't ideal or what. Again, the injection resulted in the "spidering" rather than the smooth vertical channel of the DnF.
My personally feeling is that either of these processes are a great tool to help get roots deeper and pull water through your profile. Obviously each of the processes require very similar climatic conditions to carry out although the drill n fill not so much on the soil moisture. We found getting bagged dried sand made it very easy to load the machines and believe we'd go through 18-20 pallets in the drill n fill process. Purchased through Waupaca. Hope this information helps.
Justin