We all know that to achieve top-quality bunkers, we need to invest cca. 15-25% of our labor budget maintaining bunkers annually and then we didn’t talk about the material cost.
But what if a golf club decides not to eliminate or reduce the number of bunkers? What is the solution for this?
What can greenkeepers do beyond the well-known best practices to reduce bunker maintenance costs (e.g. maximizing internal bunker drainage, carefully selecting the sand type, rethinking bunker shape, size, location, and depth, etc.)
The Breakers Palm Beach – a luxury oceanfront resort in Palm Beach, Florida – thought they would use CapillaryFlow‘s Capillary Wash Box solution for their bunkers.
The Capillary Wash Box allows you to condition – washing the sand – your bunker sand back to new again. Thus you can lengthen the lifespan of your sand and you will have no sand replacement costs.
The director of golf and grounds, Mark Reid at The Breakers Palm Beach said
“Upon researching and conducting a trial in 2017, prior to the last Ocean Course renovation, we experienced very little washout after storms once the technology was implemented.”
Golf architect Rees Jones remodeled Ocean Course in 2018 (located at the main hotel). He then returned in 2022 to reconstruct his namesake course.
This project included a full re-grassing, a new irrigation system, enhancements to most holes to allow for expanded shot options, and the rebuilding of all 156,000 square feet of bunkers.
In addition to installing new Capillary Bunkers technology, Reid also incorporated the revolutionary Capillary Wash Box.
