Fox Chapel Racquet Club
Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania

Clay-like courts called Har-Tru® are a tennis player’s dream: easy on the body, no glare and great playability. The only catch is the courts need daily watering from overhead sprinklers, which means downtime for the courts—and players.

Unless you’re talking about Fox Chapel Racquet Club. In late 1999, the club installed a subsurface irrigation system featuring Rain Bird’s Landscape Dripline inline emitter tubing. Tough and dependable enough for any challenge, Landscape Dripline works while others play, delivering the moisture with uncompromising efficiency.

Court Watering Serves Up Frustration

Fox Chapel is a quaint Pittsburgh suburb, proud of its wooded hillsides and uncrowded residential developments. It’s also home of the Fox Chapel Racquet Club, an exclusive tennis and swimming facility with nine tennis courts and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Open only during the spring and summer, this seasonal club has 300 members anxious to hit the courts.

All of the club’s courts are Har-Tru, a porous clay-type surface made of crushed green/gray stone. Developed in the late 1920s by Har-Tru Corp., this soft surface is more comfortable and longer lasting than hard courts. It is the same surface used for the U.S. Open at Forest Hills from 1975 to 1977.

The key to Har-Tru’s longevity (it can last 30 years) and excellent playability is consistent moisture. For years, the only way to provide moisture was with overhead sprinklers, which had downsides for Fox Chapel. “We’d water at night and need someone to carefully oversee the system from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.,” said Leonard Chorney, Fox Chapel’s manager. “Too little water and the courts would be like a dusty desert by 5 p.m.; too much and they wouldn’t be playable in the morning.”

“Even still, on busy summer days, we’d have to water for an hour in the afternoon,” he said. “Then we’d have to juggle courts and people, which frustrated members.”

Today, Har-Tru Corp. offers a “dual-action” watering system for its courts. This system is comprised of overhead sprinklers for night watering and, for daytime, a high-performance subsurface system featuring Rain Bird’s Landscape Dripline. The sophisticated underground system supplies water to the base of the court and allows evaporation and capillary action to draw moisture up to the surface, keeping it well maintained with ease and without downtime.

This dual-action system sounded great to Chorney when he began plans to renovate four of the club’s 30-year-old courts. “Several clubs in the area had gone this route and were doing well,” he said. “So we had to give it a try.”

Advantage Landscape Dripline

The renovation began in the fall of 1999. The challenge would be to install a system that would deliver water evenly and dependably. Landscape Dripline met the challenges with pre-installed emitters, a variety of emitter spacings and flow rates, built-in pressure compensation and unmatched clog resistance.

Although clay allows good lateral water movement, it is also slow draining; a wide emitter spacing of 24 inches and low flow rate of 0.6 GPH were needed. On top of thick plastic, 50- to 60-foot Landscape Dripline laterals were laid out perpendicular to the slope of each court and spaced 24 inches apart. At each end, laterals were connected to one-inch PVC headers and divided into separate north and south zones. Each zone has a pressure reducer, filter and flushing valve and is controlled by Rain Bird valves (DVF) and controllers (ESP Series). Geo-textile material was laid over Landscape Dripline, followed by a four-inch-thick layer of crushed stone topped with a one-inch-thick layer of Har-Tru.

Har-Tru President Dick Funkhouser said that while he likes the high technology of Landscape Dripline, it’s the results he banks on. “Landscape Dripline provides an even volume of water over the court area, which is important to the playability of the surface,” he said. “I know I can rely on it because it’s a Rain Bird product. I also know I’ll get excellent support for my installations anywhere in the country.”

“The system’s working great,” said Chorney. “We’re looking forward to our season next year. We’ll have much less maintenance and much happier members.”