The Club Will Be Closed Wed 10/23 and Thurs 10/24
The club will be closed next Wed and Thurs to install an automatic watering system.
We have been looking into this improvement project since the beginning of the season. Installing a timer-based watering system will confer several important benefits to the club:
-
We will be able to thoroughly saturate the courts starting at 11pm, which is the ideal time to water courts. This will lead to courts that start the day with more embedded moisture, and will allow us to roll the courts more regularly. This should improve the playability of the courts throughout the season.
-
We will be able to install more sprinkler heads per court, allowing courts to be watered more evenly
-
During very hot, dry periods in the summer, we will be able to automatically water the courts during the day. We are configuring the system so that each court can be watered individually. In this way, only 2 courts will need to be shut down at a time – one being watered and one drying.
-
Mark Brass has been tireless and reliable in watering the courts for us at 5AM virtually every day of the season. But Mark can’t do this forever, and finding someone else to do that job reliably year after year would be a daunting task.
-
In spending less time watering the courts, Mark will be able to spend more time rolling the courts and performing other maintenance tasks.
We have strong cash reserves, in part due to a generous gift from the Mike Posternak estate, and will be able to pay for this project with no need for a capital campaign or an assessment from the membership.
Why Now?
The project must be done before we get snow or a hard freeze, which, as you know, can happen before the end of October. The installation involves embedding piping along both baseline fences and in between each of the courts. This will cause a significant amount of disruption to the surface above the pipes. Affordable Sprinkers Systems, the company that will perform the work, will repair the damage as best as they can. Note that there should be no damage to the playing surface of any of the courts, and we expect the courts to play fine for the last few weeks of the season. But the real cosmetic repair will happen when Cape and Islands reconditions the courts in the Spring. If we were to do the installation in the Spring before the reconditioning, it could easily delay our opening by several weeks because we would have to coordinate two extremely busy companies during unpredictable weather. By doing the installation now, we have the shortest reasonable time in which both our season and the the court conditions will be impacted.
When we scheduled the project, we expected it to be typical cool/cold Fall weather and that court usage would be pretty low. Little did we know that it would be sunny and in the 70’s. I apologize that we need to close your club during such a beautiful window of weather.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
See you on the courts!
Dan Smith
President
dsmith9.stc@gmail.com
info@sharontennisclub.org
