Technical
Barry Pace, Contracts Manager for Speedcut Contractors offers, what he calls, ‘A Fools Guide to Bunker Liners’. In this article, he explains the various options available, discusses the success rates and looks at some of the pitfalls that await the unsuspecting. The bottom line to ask yourself is, do you need to line at all?
I
n this article, I have tried to be as objective as possible with the actual products or solutions to give as fair a summary as I can but, as much of what I think comes from twenty-seven odd years of actually
watching, seeing and doing ‘golf’, then some subjectivity may creep in. I have also ignored drainage as, regardless of the chosen option, an adequate piped or soakaway drainage system in place should be a given for any bunker project to succeed. So, the first question really is; “do you really
need to line?”, and that answer can only come from you as the specifier or the client in terms of what is available to spend and what is wished to be achieved, perceptions, expectations and, of course, site conditions. So, here are my initial thoughts on why you
would line - playability, durability, longevity, and consistency (the last one could explode a discussion for ever, so I will leave it there).
But, in reality to: - prevent/reduce vermin damage to bases - prevent/reduce stone contamination - prevent/reduce wash down of faces
- prevent/reduce silt and clay contamination and to improve drainage
- reduce labour inputs
- reduce sand replacement costs and extend sand lifespan
- prevent/reduce the migration of sand areas towards a green
And why you maybe do not need to line: - natural sand subsoil - stable, stone free subsoils
- shallow sand faces with minimal erosion factors
The Natural Way
So, assuming you do not have a site with perfect stone free, stable soils or subsoils that will not erode, plus enough staff to keep sand depths consistent, the first option is the old school way, which has always been to use upside down or up grown turf. My preference has always been to use the
nastiest, oldest, wiriest turf you can find on the course, but logistics and availability are invariably the downfall of this, along with time to bed in. New ‘standard’ turf to me is a
Barry Pace
completely false expense as it neither provides any durability nor life, especially if it is a ‘busy’ bunker.
Some of the new ‘thick’ or revet turfs will do a job, but the square metreage costs need considering; high spec turf doesn’t come cheap. If you have time, ‘grow-in’ is an excellent option, allowing the turf to really bite down before spraying off just before sanding, but time is key for green side up, I think. I have recently seen some similar
‘installations’ in the UK where the whole bunker has been turfed, but they seem to have missed out the ledge bit! I do not know what happens when you go to sand up and, no, they were not hollows. I have also, in the distant past, seeded
through bunkers on full builds to establish as grass initially but, again, the scrape out and bowl preparation negates any gain, I think, with the important face edge where a lot of the issues come from being bare soil at sanding.
Soil Cap
The next option is to remove a depth of ‘nasty’ soil and replace it with some nice clean sandy material. Again, I have done this in the distant past but, unless you have pockets of perfect soil actually on site, or cheap nearby, the costs and logistics may far outweigh any actual benefit. If I was ‘spoilt’ for material, I would seriously
consider this though. Aggregate Line
Another variant, and successful at a few courses, is to use a path type aggregate cap to similarly blind out the base, but the real limitations of this are angle of slope and depth management to prevent this eroding out or up. It works well on downland with flat sand areas and big flints for a few in UK. Its use would be very limited if you have any form of sloped faces, I feel.
Polymer type Spray Stabilised Soils and Aggregate Bases
To evolve from the above, there are three versions that crop up; Klingstone, a US company with a long standing history, but I have zero knowledge or experience to comment beyond that they are still there doing what they do; Stalok; which showed up on a brief Google search - again, I can make no comment; and Better Billy Bunker, which has been used on a few sites in the UK with significant numbers of ‘happy customers’,
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