Davis Plus

Clive Liddiard is the Head Groundsman at Hampton School and is responsible for all external areas including information on closing the school for inclement weather. Clive started in the turfcare sector when working weekends at West Byfleet then joining their full-time team. He has since achieved a Soil Science MSc and improved the facilities offered at Hampton School since his appointment 10 years ago.

Clive has been using a Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station with solar, UV, soil moisture and leaf wetness sensors with USB WeatherLink data logger at Hampton School since 2007. The weather station was purchased “to give broad information and provide high levels of data that can be used to create full information trending charts, we learn from history”. Clive continues to say “my work relies on having as much information as possible which is why having decent weather systems really work. You have to use it, sit down and work with it to generate data so you know what is likely to happen and increases the bet to an educated one”.

Clive does store a lot of data to assist his decision making. For example “cricket is played on a high clay content soil and needs correct soil moisture levels for it to be rolled, having other data from lower levels of the soil structure builds a bigger picture, temperature and ET are also used. I record what the reaction was for use in the future”. A large spreadsheet is used to store the data “which shows year on year and when turf problems occur. I look to see when I last had these conditions and can see what I did to solve them”. The weather station is looked at daily and colleagues find it “very useful, particularly when carrying out training”.

In August 2012 Liddiard added a repeater to relocate their soil moisture sensors to a more suitable position. The WeatherLink Turf/Agri module was also purchased at this time. Clive is finding this additional module is proving worthwhile for automated reports. For example “soil temperature hours which I can use to justify why play is cancelled and calculated irrigation requirements that WeatherLink bases on evapotranspiration and rainfall data along with the type of plant”. Clive enthuses that “the degree day reporting allows user-definitions for showing perfect growth days for my plant type. I can store each month's profile to produce a trend chart, giving me the information to do tasks earlier so providing the plant with a better chance of germination”. However the “thaw temperature is used the most as it is how the plants feel rather than the actual temperature”. WeatherLink takes into account temperature, humidity, solar and wind to calculate the thaw temperature.

tdr300_grass

Hampton School have just invested in a FieldScout TDR300 Soil Moisture Meter “to measure the moisture levels before carrying out selected works, particularly rolling on Cricket” and two sets of soil moisture/EC/temperature loggers. Clive is planning on extending the soil moisture to varying depths across all sports.

Hampton School play 1600 games a year and since Clive’s involvement in the playing surfaces the standards have just kept going up. The best thing for Clive about have the weather station available is “having information for my site, I would recommend monitoring conditions at individual sites without hesitation”. Clive goes on to say “Mother Nature is a tough boss to have, with as much data as possible I can open the window a little and have a better chance of the work we carry out being effective”.