Centennial Park Sporting Precinct Article by the City of Albany
Over a 3 year period from 2016 the City of Albany upgraded and redeveloped its 45ha Centennial Park sporting precinct. The City aimed to create a high-quality playing surface for year round use with surrounding facilities to attract WAFL games and AFL pre-season matches. The stadium and sporting fields were part of the $34 million redevelopment of Albany’s Centennial Park Sporting Precinct. The stadium features a 442-seat grandstand, while the field size meets AFL specifications and features WAFLgrade lighting. The precinct redevelopment comprised 3 main areas: The western precinct, the junior football ovals and the main AFL stadium ovals (2 training ovals & 1 main stadium oval).
The Western Precinct
The Western precinct consists of 3 ovals with turf cricket wickets, an athletic track and a winter overlay of soccer pitches. The area was irrigated in the early 1990s using Hunter i31 / i25 rotors using #15 grey nozzles with a row spacing of 18 m and a sprinkler
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spacing of 20m using a triangle plan. The uniformity was adequate, and an improvement over the travelling irrigator that had been used up to this point. The 48 station multi wire system utilized a second controller to operate the turf wicket irrigation. The “Centennial park sporting precinct” redevelopment saw the total upgrade of over half of this western area from the drainage layer up to and including new kikuyu roll on turf. The irrigation was designed by “Hydroplan” and installed by “Horizon West Landscape & Irrigation”. The new system saw the installation of a new pump station using 2 x Lowara 66SV4/2 vertical multistage pumps with variable frequency drive Hydrovar’s fitted to each drawing from 2 x 230kL Heritage tanks. A third tank has since been added, increasing water storage. Water is sourced from 13 shallow low yielding bores each fitted with a Lowara 4GS05 submersible pump. A 200mm PN 12.5 poly main was installed through the center of the western precinct adjacent to a new cycle/walking path connecting to the pump station that services the main AFL football stadium. Isolation valves
The Overflow - Winter 2020
Above: The 2 x Lowara 66SV4/2 vertical multistage pumps
