Golf course intelligent watering solution

With the increasing contradiction between global water supply and demand, the implementation of fine irrigation for golf lawns also requires the implementation of on-time irrigation, on-demand irrigation and high-efficiency irrigation. This will not only achieve precise irrigation and water saving effect, but also help to improve management level and reduce management cost.

Accurate, efficient, integrated and scientific management of golf course turf irrigation will help the healthy development of golf courses.

In response to the appeal problem, our company has developed a wireless intelligent watering system for golf courses, which is a fully automatic watering system designed specifically for golf course green belts that is all-weather, unattended and unoperated. The system is mainly composed of wireless sensors, weather stations, intelligent dome cameras, intelligent gateways, wireless solenoid valve controllers and other equipment.

The design of a golf irrigation system is different from that of other irrigation systems in many ways. Golf courses generally have large turf areas (400,000-570,000 square meters) with unique characteristics, high sprinkler pressure (0.4-0.55 MPa), and the ability to irrigate for only 4-8 hours per day. For example, the size of the course, geographical location, climatic conditions, etc., so in practice, there are still many problems.

Golf courses require sprinkler irrigation in the following areas: greens, tees, fairways and long grass areas (including flowers and shrubs). The greens, tees and fairways need to be irrigated periodically, and the greens are the three that need to be watered more periodically. The design of golf course sprinkler system will directly affect the quality of the course turf and the overall environmental effect of the surrounding area.

Sprinkler System Design Components

Sprinkler systems can be divided into three main categories depending on the mode of operation:

① fully automatic systems;

② semi-automatic systems;

③Manual system.

The general sprinkler system design consists of:

① Water source;

② pumping station;

③ Water distribution system (pipe network design);

④Control valves;

⑤ Sprinkler head.

Fully automatic control system includes wired and wireless.

Basis for designing sprinkler irrigation system

The design basis indicators of sprinkler system include:

① the maximum daily water consumption of the lawn in a given situation;

②Partitioning of the sprinkler system;

③The number of hours of sprinkler irrigation per day;

④ frequency of sprinkler irrigation;

⑤ Topography, climatic conditions and the prevailing wind direction and intensity of the sprinkler irrigation area.

Use of Internet of Things Technology

 A modern sprinkler system should have two devices: soil moisture sensors and weather stations, and these stations transmit information to the cloud platform. Based on these data, the cloud platform can automatically adjust the required sprinkler cycle to automatically open or close the valve, and implement the whole process of automatic management. This results in significant labor savings and irrigation water savings.

 Sprinkler system design

Real-time: Users can monitor air temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall, light intensity, ultraviolet radiation, soil water content, soil nutrients, etc. through computer or cell phone anytime and anywhere, and according to this information, the cloud platform will automatically send instructions to control the water valve action through the upper and lower limits of data for watering or manual control.

Real-time: The system uses wireless sensor network technology for real-time monitoring of the golf course lawn, which makes the arrangement of sensor nodes flexible and easy to implement. The nodes are battery powered and can be buried below the turf.

Intelligent: The system can automatically control the watering volume by combining the weather information, soil moisture content and the water demand of the turf in different seasons, and water different amounts of water according to different plants and terrain to keep the soil moisture within the best range required for crop growth.

Efficient water saving: The system can irrigate the lawn intelligently according to the soil moisture distribution and the terrain of the lawn. The system adopts the curve watering mode, i.e. the watering volume decreases with the increase of time and soil moisture, so as to save water.

Soil nutrient monitoring: Based on the data returned by the soil nutrient tester, the monitoring center can monitor the soil nutrient situation in the field at any time to determine whether fertilization is needed.

Pipe network monitoring: Based on the pressure sensors of water pipes placed on the pipe network, the water supply pumps can be automatically shut off to reduce property damage by implementing monitoring to detect accidental water leakage points in a timely manner.