Practical Drainage for Golf, Sportsturf and Horticulture

Practical Drainage is easy to read and presented in a non-technical style generously supported with helpful illustrations. There are three key messages in this book: water moves sideways only slowly through soil—leading to a detailed description of how drains work; the how-and-why of perched water table methods of construction; and sands are different from one another—they must be tested before use in turf root zones. These key messages are preceded by detailed descriptions of how water moves into soils and the effects of compaction on that movement. The final chapters give step-by-step guidelines for calculating drain spacings and depths, based on measurements of the hydraulic conductivity of the soil and its various layers. There are also chapters about how to measure hydraulic conductivity and how to design and install sub-soil drainage systems.

Author Biography

Keith McIntyre has a BSc Hons from the University of New England and a MSc from the Australian National University. He has 34 years of experience in horticulture and sportsturf. He worked for the Australian National Botanic Gardens for 8 years, and then moved to City Park’s Technical Services Unit in Canberra, a specialist group working in soils, drainage, irrigation, pest management, tree management, and urban lake management. Keith worked there for 19 years and managed the Unit for 5 years. This Unit built up a reputation for excellence in cool season turf management and irrigation, but its most important contribution was in the field of sportsground construction, soils, and drainage. Keith left the ACT Government in 1995 , and set up his own consultancy—Horticultural Engineering Consultancy in Canberra. His current main area of expertise is in sportsturf and the associated areas of design, profile design, drainage, and soil selection. He has recently been involved in seven of the new facilities being constructed for the 2000 Olympics.

Dr. Bent Jakobsen has a BAg and a PhD in Soil Science from the royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen. He has spent much of his working life working on compaction in agricultural soils, and on particle movement within soils. He worked for CSIRO in Adelaide at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute on agricultural soil compaction and with the CSIRO Division of Forest Research on soil compaction problems associated with logging operations. Bent spent six years at Canberra’s Technical Services Unit Working with Keith on Soil and drainage problems. He has been responsible for developing several simple, but very effective, laboratory testing techniques to determine the compacted hydraulic conductivity of soils, and has related these tests to the real world of sportsturf use. His in-depth knowledge of soil physics and his ability to apply this science to the development of sportsturf profiles has made a unique contribution to the industry.