We have this process that we do to our POS Tiff Eagle greens. We’ve been doing it for years and I call it churning..
First, you have to have well top dressed ones. The more sand the better. Then, you need a really good set of groomer reels (or two). Next, you need to get at least two REALLY sharp sets of reels ( 
), preferably ones that have been freshly sharpened.. and following up you’ll need a roller or two..
The groomers slice and dice, the two mowers and the roller smooth everything out. It’s a quick way to get it from a 10 to about an 11 or more on the stimp meter. It’s amazing what Superintendents go through to provide fast and smooth greens..
Each groomer reel costs about $3000 and there are 3 per machine. Sometimes we use two machines. This sand, is from nine holes. Typically we’ll do each green twice, at 90 degrees.
We’re trying the Greens Care Plus. I called the folks at Terresolve, who make it and it sounded great. We’ve been getting about 1000 hrs out of the regular fluid and the main feature of the Synthetic Plus is that it can last up to 2 X’s as long. It would be great to get those results although the cost of the oil isn’t the big benefit there. It would be mostly in the labor and time involved.
We ran it two days straight and nothing unusual. I’m not sure if I expected it to turn orange or what but it ran just like a clock. This summer will be the big test.
It went so well in this one, I ordered enough for another. If they still hold together then I’d like to try it in our fairway mowers. This does not cost twice as much as the standard bio fluid but to get 2X’s the life in those machines with their increased capacity would be a nice savings.
And if it turned out to be a better fluid..
Here’s something you probably won’t see too often..
Jacobsen’s Green Care Bio Hydraulic fluid, and this is the Veg based, is made by Terresolve, the same company whose hyd fluid we’ve been using for over 10 years.. Fromn talking to people at Jac and Terresolve the main difference is the Jac fluid has more additives. Generally it is more expensive. Not last time I checked so I stocked up.. I was even able to wrangle free freight out of the salesman..
This particular model Toro, a 1995 – 3100, is getting the standard Greens Care. The unit has 6800 hours and has just gone through it’s bi-annual service. That’s new lift arm pins and bushings, hydraulic hoses, brakes, front plastic rollers and anything else I can find. Because this has the most hours of any triplex we have it will be used as the backup for the Greens, Tees and Roller machines.
This is from Sunday morning setting tees.
No cellphones at work.. Can you imagine a waiter answering a call while waiting on a table?? They came up with a plan that Supervisors with Managers permission could use their phones. I’m not sure what happened but that’s finished now. No cellphones except company issued ones. I’m not sure what happened….
Not that I used it much but it was becoming unbelievably useful. If someone said they needed something I could put it in a note. I could talk to tech support while working a machine. Being able to take pictures with it was great. Being able to do this on a break was too The iPod portion was very cool after everyone had left and being able to listen to Pandora was a lot of fun..
I’ve even gotten into Filemaker working on a program for the shop that works on an iPhone, iPod touch and I guess iPad.. I’m thinking the iPod or iPad would be fun to keep track of the equipment on.. We’ll see.
It’s amazing but a lot of manufactures build thair seat platforms to accept ONLY their seats, at usually an outrageous price. This is a universal seat platforade out of bedknives. So far Amy seat on sale has fit.
