greensidelg

Thanks guys! If you ever take the plunge let me know I'll point you towards places that were helpful to me. Cheers

WUTiger, Thanks! I like your set up too, especially like the touch with the tee box and tee markers. I did not put any drainage in the sand bunker. I originally planned to when I did the initial construction. I excavated the bunker at the same time as the green but didn't ever find time to finish it last year. Over the course of the last year I had a lot of opportunity to observe the natural drainage of sandless bunker and it seemed to do pretty well on it's own. That was enough reason for me to decide not to put in the extra effort of installing drain pipe. I partly was just so excited to put the sand in and finish off the look (I was sick of looking at the dirt bunker next to my baby!) but mostly just didn't have the motivation to do all that work for a minimal drainage improvement. I didn't put any sort of liner in the bunker under the sand. I looked at a few different options, mainly a few different golf bunker specific liners or by using an old, tried and true method of installing sod upside down to prevent stones from coming up into the sand over time. I talked with a local superintendent who didn't think it was worth the effort so I decided against it to cut costs and time. After sinking the drain pipes for the green in their trenches I spread about 3-4" of 3/4" trap rock and then spread about 3 inches of pea stone above that. The smaller pea stone prevents the small particles of the root zone mix (which should be sand, however I used a mostly topsoil mix and installed it about 8" deep) from moving down into the drain field and clogging the perforated pipe. The larger 3/4" gravel leaves too much space between the stones and would not stop this potential contamination. Here's a couple pics of those layers

It's a lot of work, but if you do the research and are willing to learn a little by trial and error it's definitely worth it in the end, but you have to be committed to it. You don't need a license to get 99% of the products you need to keep it healthy. Just about every product you need (fungicide, fertilizer, insecticide) is available in one form or another that can be bought at home depot you just need to be willing to read labels and do a little math to dial in the application rates. The only difference between the product you need a license for is the concentration of the active ingredient. Construction took my brother and I about 3 weekends and cost about $2500 including excavator rental, drainage pipe, gravel, irrigation parts, used John Deere greensmower in great shape, and the sod for the green (creeping bentgrass) and the rough surrounds (k blue, fescue mix). Annual upkeep is about $500 maybe slightly less depending upon how realistic you want it to play. I cut this at .140 inches to keep it rolling around 9 on the stimpmeter, 10+ if i roll it regularly. If you'd be happy to have it run 7-8 you can cut it a little higher and the upkeep is a bit less demanding. A lot of it also depends on how well the growing conditions are. Poor conditions mean more spraying, aerating, etc... which means more $. If you wanted just a target green for chipping into that was kept at fairway height (.350 inches roughly) you probably could have a nice surface without the drainage and irrigation which would cut costs dramatically and still look nice in the back yard. Here's a couple more pics,

built from scratch in spring '12