The Weyburn Golf Club will be installing a completely new nine-hole Rainbird irrigation system on the front nine this August and September, and a new fundraiser project will be launched to help with the expenses.
The project is scheduled to take 40 days, with only one or two holes being closed at a time.
The project will include HDPE Pipe (as opposed to PVC), and roughly 300 new sprinkler heads. The front nine system will be a closed loop as that is not currently the case.
The Golf Club will launch an irrigation fundraising program where they will be selling engraving on all of the new heads along with other sponsorship options.
“This project has been a long time in the making and we can’t thank our members, sponsors, staff and local communities enough for the support we’ve received,” said the club in a Facebook post on Monday.
“We hope this is just the beginning and we are able to turn around and update the back nine in the next three-to-five years as well,” said the post.
At the Golf Club’s annual meeting held earlier this spring, members learned that the golf club has been approved for a loan from the Weyburn Credit Union of up to $750,000, and once the project is approved, they will need to repay the loan with payments of $20,000 twice a year.
A condition for the loan is to pay down their back tax debt, and repayment of the federal COVID loan of $30,000.
The work will begin in August by J.T.’s Irrigation of Saskatoon, and will take about 40 days for the installation to be completed on the front nine holes.
Past club president Marshall Bakken said at the AGM the price of oil has had an impact on the price of the pipe, as it’s a high-density poly pipe made from petroleum. Since January, the price of the pipe has gone up by about $22,000 as the oil prices have risen.
“I don’t think that will make or break the project,” he said, noting the expense of having down time to repair the old irrigation system will more than offset the cost of the new system.
It was estimated the golf course crew spent over 500 man-hours doing repairs last summer to the system.
