This should be good! Your post on ATY was one of a couple that set off the epiphany that going short with cool season grass was a real option for me to DIY.

 

Awesome! Looking forward to following the progress!

 

I can't wait! Love the new forever home!

 

Congrats..This is going to be awesome! If I had that mower I think I'd mow twice a day :bandit:

 

Thanks for the replies. I am really excited and anxious. The kill date is 10 days away.
And seed down is about 7.5 weeks away. It has been a plan in the works for about a year and can't wait to see the final product!

This should be good! Your post on ATY was one of a couple that set off the epiphany that going short with cool season grass was a real option for me to DIY.

I'm glad it inspired you and others that close mowed cool season turf was not just something you saw on sports fields. I was hesitant to write that post, mostly because it was against the grain of what most are trained to do with kentucky bluegrass. Looking back, I am glad I did and am excited to see others sharing the same interest i have in short KBG!

 

Going from my previous home with 4.3k sq ft of turf to my new home of 38k, it was a no brainer that equipment upgrades were in order. First off, i decided on a John Deere X590 to be my workhorse for the yard. Tasks such as spraying, aerating, hauling, towing a drag mat, and mulching leaves are all handled with ease. It handles all the slopes and hills in the yard great.

Next on the list was a good spray setup. I needed a sprayer that could accurately and efficiently spray 38k as I do alot of spraying. I spray alot of Primo+FAS, Serenade, and soil conditioners. I decided on the JD 25 gallon mounted unit. (Pic with my youngest when he helped me put it together)

This unit had a spray width of 90", but with only 3 nozzles spaced 30" apart it was not going to apply products with the precision I demand, so upgrades were in order. I made a new boom for it made out of 1" square tube, fit the existing "brake away" bars on the ends, and was able to now have a 5 nozzle boom that evenly sprays 120" wide with nozzles spaced closer at 24".

120" wide is an important width because the 2500B mow width is 60" wide (after a 2" overlap). By making it spray 120" I can just drive up and down the stripes created by the 2500B and get 100% overlap coverage (sprays the whole stripe I drive down, plus half of the adjacent stripe on the left and the right). I also added a pressure gauge, pressure regulator, primary strainer, and check valve strainers at the tips. Also the excess coming off the pressure regulator is routed back to the tank to keep a continuous agitation to whatever I am spraying.

I also mounted up a bicycle style speedometer to the x590 so I can keep a consistent speed while spraying. The speedo is mounted on the spray control switch, so I can watch the speed in hand and also start/stop the spray.

the sensor portion of the Speedo is mounted on a home made bracket that is just inside the right rear wheel. The pickup magnet is mounted to the rim.

Other equipment upgrades consisted of changing out my Earthway spreader for a Spyker, a 48" tow aerator, and I already had a tow lawn roller and lawn cart when I had a lawn tractor back in 2006.

 

Nice work Pete. I think you already know how I feel about low cut cool season turf. Can't wait to see your progress.

 

In September of last year I ended up picking up a 2011 John Deere 2500B from an auction in Florida. The triplex was part of a list of equipment brought to auction from globalturfequipment and auctioned off by rebel auction company on proxibid. The exact unit I got was listed on globalturf's website, and I was able to attain it from the auction for about 25% of the price they had it listed at. My guess is units that sit on globalturf's lot for a certain amount of time end up getting auctioned off to make room for new units.

It needed alittle TLC, but everything worked on it. It had around 1800hrs on it. QA5 7 blade reel cutting units with a max bench HOC of 1.5", groomers spaced for greens conditioning, and rear roller brushes.

I spent the rest of 2016 mowing with the triplex as much as possible so I get a good feel of what it needed over winter as well as seeing how well it handled the yard. It left amazing stripes on the NoMix and I was able to cut down to 1.125" with no scalping at all.

Over the winter i went thru the machine and did some reconditioning. I was able to get quite a few cuts with it in the fall and gauge what shape it is in, how it performed around the property, and start figuring out what needed to be addressed. The engine, chassis, and hydraulics on the machine were in great shape. No leaks, everything works very smoothly, and the engine cylinder leakage and compression tests were very good (<5% leakage, 180-185 compression). The only things needed on the engine/chassis itself are the PMs (change oil/coolant, tune up, change hydro fluid). And I changed the smooth tires to turfs.

After figuring out that the 2500B was going to be a good fit for the property, and that I was able to cut the NoMix at 1.125" before any renovations, I rebuilt the cutting units with the goal to set them up to maintain KBG between .5"-1" bench HOC.

First off I basically stripped each cutting unit down, spent a lot of time with parts in the solvent tank, made a rust removing bath for the rusted parts, and any rusted painted parts were stripped, primed, and painted. Then every threaded surface had a tap or die run across it before applying some fluid film. Sorry no before pics, but here is what a cutting unit looked like just before reassembly.

Here are some pics of the groomer assembly that I am excited to try out. I converted the greens setup to a fairway setup.
(Old spacers and knives removed.)

(Difference between greens knife and fairway knife.)

(Assembled unit with knives now spaced 1/2" apart opposed to 1/4" apart before.)

I had to do some work inside the conditioner drives. They would intermittently work. There is a tapered brass bushing that works similar to how a synchro works in a manual transmission. It is under the gear the screwdriver is pointing to. When pressure is put on that bushing it locks the gear to the shaft. They were worn and needed attention. I also found a cracked bearing and partially sheared off keyway in one of the units.

I measured the reels and they were all around 4.7"(5" is new). They cut ok, but would have needed a grind before next year. Because they needed a grind, are over half worn, and that I wanted to see how well a new reel cut, I decided to splurge and get new reels.
(Old reels)

(How JD packages the new reels)

I replaced all the reel bearings, and seals. As well as all the seals on the conditioner drives.

Here is a pic of a rusty old bearing compared to new. I think the course that had this machine needs to rethink their greasing interval.

Replaced the bedknives from the low cut greens knife(not sure why they were even paired with a 7 blade reel?) To a high cut fairway knife. Notice the difference in design, and how much thicker the fairway knife is. Also the top face and front faces are wider.

Here is some pics of them fully assembled, adjusted and just awaiting a backlap.

In this pic you can see I ditched the rear power brush and as a result I had to add the appropriate counterweight.

Here you can see the new bedbar pivot cam, bolt, and hardware.

Here you can see I got rid of the smooth hollow rollers on the rear, I moved the solid smooth rollers that were previously on the front to the back, and added some new grooved rollers to the front.

Some additional pics.

 

That is a beautiful machine Pete. You've done an amazing job fixing it up. I love your property and can't wait to see it sub 1" with some top quality grass.

 

Thanks Ward and J_nick. Finding a good deal on the mower, fixing it up to a like new condition and setting it up just how I wanted it was a blast! It is really a fun machine to mow with!

 

I also ended up changing out the hydro fluid, coolant, plugs, filters, belt, and changed the oil. I then backlapped them to match up the new bedknife to reel.

A few other updates I did to the mower was add a fairway yoke kit and a third wheel assist kit.

When I mowed with it in the fall there was a couple issues that affected the aftercut appearance. One was resolved by changing out the greens style yoke kit with the chains to a yoke kit like you would find on 7500A fairway mower. With the greens yoke kit, the cutting units would bounce around more causing some washboarding and uneven cuts especially since the yard is not perfectly smooth. With the new kit aftercut quality was improved. JD markets the kit as,

I added the third wheel assist because of the slopes and hills on the property. The 2 wheel setup handled the yard fine when it was dry out, but when conditions were not ideal I would break the tires loose and tear up some turf in some places. I didn't want to worry about ruining new seedlings in the first couple mows or waiting a few days after it rained to mow or not mowing in the morning. Now that it is 3wd I can go up the steepest slope in my yard Which is 18° and have zero wheel spin even in a rainstorm (yes I did try it )

The end result of these two upgrades is I feel I have a mower that would cut my yard as well as any trim/surround mower but is significantly lighter, has a smaller cutting width of 62" which i needed to get around some obstacles, and 22" cutting heads that provide better contouring of the terrain.

A few pics of how it mowed the yard early April this year

 

One of the biggest issues needing to get solved was being able to get water supplied to the yard. Luckily the home had an irrigation system that was installed by the first homeowners back in 1993. The bad news is the system had not been used by the second owners at all from 2004-2016. The system has 7 zones, but initially was only able to find 4 valves. So I powered up the system and manually turned on some of the zones I found. Surprisingly, sprinklers started poping up all thru the yard! Some of the heads blew off risers(replaced and fixed the damaged ones), most did not rotate, all were old hunter "G" type heads, but the main lines held pressure and the supply lines seemed to be in working order!

I had to get in touch with the 1st owners (who still lived in town) to try and locate the remaining zones and valve boxes. Luckily they took alot of pictures back in '93 and I was able to turn over a large rock to find one, and dig thru mulch beds to find the others.

One setback in the irrigation was about 5 minutes after I turned on a zone, the water pressure would drop and the sprinklers would fall back down. I went down to the pressure gauge by the well plumbing and could see the pressure slowly fall as a zone ran. It quickly became obvious that the well pump that was installed was not going to supply the volume I needed. I talked over options with my well guy and had him run a few tests.

The well has a static water level if 120ft, the current pump was set at 140ft, the well was drilled 240ft deep, and has a recovery of 30gpm. But there was only a 3/4hp pump installed that only put out about 6gpm. Talking with the well guy, wanting a variable speed pump, and initially wanting to use all of that 30gpm recovery, I quickly realized that due to the price, putting in a 3-5hp pump with a new wiring and supply line was not going to be an option.

We decided on installing a 1.5hp Grundfos constant pressure well pump setup.

The new pump works great, no more 60/40 cycling when using water in the house, and the pump now has an output of just over 16gpm. Also since it is a variable output unit, I would not need to match the sprinkler output with the well to prevent it from cycling. This was important since the sprinkler system is existing and would make rehabbing it alot easier. This spring when I fired up the irrigation after the pump was installed, the sprinklers popped up and stayed up. Ran one zone for 5hrs and had no issues, even with the flow meter showing it putting out about 15gpm. I was excited to now have the supply to begin rehabbing the rest of the irrigation!

 

Definitely looking forward to this! :thumbup:

 

Great story. This is going to be an epic thread.

 

Thanks EG and Ware. Definitely getting excited, anxious, and nervous now that this "milo" is about to get real! This is the biggest renovation i have done(previously 12k was the biggest), and the size of it is what makes me nervous/anxious. One thing that I am glad I did was get the ball rolling early on, as I wouldn't want to be rushing to seed down on something this large. Still some little things to do such as killing it, tweeking irrigation, hopefully three rounds of seed bed smoothing/prep, but most of the big stuff is done. Glyphosate is planned for June 25th! I'll try and get some more updates up tonight.

 

Wow! Very impressive setup! I'm doing the backyard at 1in, and front yard at 3.5in. I wanted to see if this whole growing short thing was just what people say or had anything to it =P Looks like you proved it can be done lol

 

Wow.
Quick question: how do you manage to sustain the grass at 1 inch or lower? How often do you mow? I mow every 3 days and on a 160 sqm lawn I collect about 15 liters of grass clippings. K try to keep it at about 4-5 cm.

 

Thanks GrassDaddy and ales_gantar. At the 1.0" height I currently mow about 2x a week on the NoMix. That is trying to follow the 1/3rd rule. When I had bewitched at .75" at my last home, I mowed once every 5 days. You would think at such a low height, you would need to mow every day, but that is not the case for a few reasons. 1) bewitched is a slower growing cultivar, 2) I use generic Primo Maxx which reduces the top growth, and 3) I think shorter mowed grass just grows less in general. For example, if you mow at 3" and you get 1" of growth in 2 days, you won't get 1" of growth when cutting the same grass at 1" in 2 days. It will be less.

 

I am enjoying this thread immensely.

 

3) I think shorter mowed grass just grows less in general. For example, if you mow at 3" and you get 1" of growth in 2 days, you won't get 1" of growth when cutting the same grass at 1" in 2 days. It will be less.

Interesting. I was wondering about that. That's good to know. I wonder if that's due to the grass being "trained" to stay short, or if less leaf surface = less photosynthesis/energy to grow out as rapidly...

 

Once winter was over, I couldn't wait to get the renovation started. First i took out all of the brick edging that was in the front and side beds by the house.

I then started defining all the mulch beds. I was really aggressive with the lip depth knowing I would back fill part of it with mulch and I collected all the sod chunks so I could have a pile of soil that would be needed later for leveling. In total I have about 7.5k sq ft of beds and after defining them, I probably collected 8-10 cu yds of soil in a pile in the back of the yard.

When all the beds were defined and cleaned up, I ended up spraying a mixture of Prodiamine+Isoxaben to limit weed growth in the beds. I also Glyphosated the new planned mulched area by the swing set and trampoline and trimmed up all the trees.

A couple of notes I made from early spring to address later on 1) I saw an incredible amount of grubs when defining the beds, and 2) the few fine fescue patches that are in the shadier areas have alot of thatch.

Also I took these pictures from March 11th. The lawn greened up significantly earlier then the neighbors yards. It could have been from fall urea feedings, but if you see the sharp line between my neighbors yard on the left I suspect it was from the late fall primo apps. There is research out of OSU that suggested fall primo maxx applications encouraged spring green up. I applied primo on 9/3 and 10/1.

 

I am enjoying this thread immensely.

Thanks for following Ridgerunner!

3) I think shorter mowed grass just grows less in general. For example, if you mow at 3" and you get 1" of growth in 2 days, you won't get 1" of growth when cutting the same grass at 1" in 2 days. It will be less.

Interesting. I was wondering about that. That's good to know. I wonder if that's due to the grass being "trained" to stay short, or if less leaf surface = less photosynthesis/energy to grow out as rapidly...

I wonder as well. I do suspect the latter. Less leaf, less roots, maybe alittle more stress on the plant by mowing lower.

 

I've been out of the loop for a few days and am now just catching up on things here. AMAZING thread you have here Pete :thumbup: Keep up the great work on the thread and your lawn/equipment.

 

Thanks Mightyquinn! I think part of the reason I love this hobby is just for the equipment.

 

In May I decided to tackle the irrigation. With the new well pump installed, all of the zones would pop up and hold pressure. It is a 7 zone system made of pvc with 42 hunter "G" type heads. After running it and marking all the heads, I quickly realized that it was not going to deliver the coverage and uniformity that I needed. Also all of the heads needed to get upgraded. Most of the heads were spaced around 40ft apart and there were no heads within 20ft of the street. So I drew up on paper where I would put sprinkler heads if I were to design the system from new with closer 30ft spacing. I then marked the yard with "X's" where all the heads should be, compared the old zones with new placement, and started drawing where heads needed to be moved and where heads needed to be added to get proper coverage. I also marked with dashed lines where I was trenching for new feeder lines to the light posts, new wiring to valve boxes, and I redid the invisible dog fence around the yard as well since I had the trencher because it was only 1" in the ground and I needed it deeper so I wouldn't hit it when aerating.

I then rented a trencher and sliced up the yard. The new trenches are about 10" in the ground. Well above where the existing pvc is buried.

I tied to the existing pcv and used poly pipe for the new install. In total I used 1000ft of poly pipe, 1000ft of invisible fence wire, 400ft of valve wiring, 250ft of feeder cable to the lights, and 56 new Hunter PGP heads. I then tested and everything worked great and began backfilling.
(Some video clips of some zones)

https://youtu.be/4d1qHpvQvSI

I used my drag setup that I made over winter and plan to use for seed bed prep and leveling to backfill all the trenches. It made quick work and really helped get all the soil back in the trench. In total it weighs about 200lbs and the X590 did a good job pulling it.

The irrigation system went from a 7 zone 42 head system with around 40ft spacing with no coverage at the street to a 7 zone 56 head system with closer 30ft spacing and good coverage throughout the yard. Each zone puts out roughly 12.5gpm which will take each zone about 4hrs to put an inch of water down. I would like more, but is a number I can work with. One nice thing about the low precipitation rate is it works really well with the clay loam soil i have. At 12.5gpm i still have enough flow from the well to run the shower, washing machine or other inside plumbing while keeping the system running at 60psi. By the time I was done, all but 12 of the existing heads needed to be moved some amount.