04/02/2025
In 2023 Pacific Irrigation Consultants was retained as a sub-consultant with Ground3 GC Architects by the City of Red Deer, AB to design a new irrigation & pumping system for the City owned River Bend GC. The River Bend GC was originally designed / built by renowned architect Bill Robinson in the mid 1980's and is an outstanding facility in terms of playability and popularity in the area.
Ground3 has designed some much needed upgrades to the golf course, and we have designed a full irrigation system to replace the aging 40 year old irrigation system. Pacific Irrigation is in charge of managing the construction work.
The first step was to install a new wet well, lake intake pipe and concrete slab for the new irrigation pumping system. The wet well provides access to the water in the adjacent 15 acre lake via a 20" ID lake intake pipe as shown in the drawing.
This work had to be completed in the winter months to take advantage of the lower water levels and frozen ground to minimize damage to the golf course from the equipment.
Here is the crew from Pidherney's Construction installing the 20" HDPE lake intake pipe into the lower precast concrete barrel now that the excavation to install the pipe into the lake was backfilled creating a temporary dam so the excavation for the wet well can be dewatered. The crew worked inside a shoring device for safety from the adjacent cut. Multiple 6" dewatering pumps were needed to keep the area dewatered.
Once the 20" lake intake pipe was installed, the remaining precast barrels were installed and compacted up to final grade. Then the forms, rebar and insulation was installed for the concrete slab which will support the 15,000 lb pumping system slid & enclosure.
Approximately 15 cubic meters of concrete was installed for the engineered slab on grade, the final perimeter insulation installed, which will be covered with local fill material with the final site grading work in the coming weeks.
The new pumping system manufactured by Flowtronex MCI in Dallas, Texas is scheduled to arrive on site later in April - we will document that step of work and post it here.
(Slab photos provided by Timcon Construction)
