There are a number of products around making good use of synthetic grass in their ideas that can be used as temporary means for the dogs to relieve themselves in comfort and safety while awaiting the return of reasonable conditions.

The first is known as the PottyPatch, a product made of synthetic grass that is also endorsed by the American Kennel Club. The PottyPatch has three layers to provide the maximum comfort and functionality possible. The top layer is synthetic grass which the dogs will find comfortable to walk on. The second layer is a mesh grate that allows liquids to drain quickly away. The bottom layer is a collection tray that is large enough for multiple uses. It is also simple to empty and clean when required. The PottyPatch comes in two sizes to suit small and large dogs.

Also available is another synthetic grass-based product called The Pup-Head which is a product that makes use of Pup-Grass. Pup-Grass is one of the most well known forms of synthetic grass for dogs. The Pup-Head provides an area that looks and feels like a patch of grass. The Pup-Grass is scented to encourage the dogs to use it. It’s portable enough to take with you ehn you travel so if you are going to be in an RV or traveling by boat, the Pup-Head might come in very handy.

Or how about the Porch Potty and its up-market buddy the Porch Potty Premium? Now the standard version is a patch of synthetic grass measuring 28” x 52” that sits atop a catch basin. The whole thing comes apart for easy cleaning and waste removal. The premium version comes complete with a mini fire hydrant to help the dogs with the hint as to what they should be doing on it. After your dog has done its business you can turn on the hose and a mini sprinkler system will pop up and clean the grass clean. A 14 foot drain hose that comes with the premium then allows the dirty water to drain away. In almost no time the water will have left your piece of synthetic grass odor free and ready for the next use.

These products are not only appropriate as a short term alternative to going outside during inclement weather they can also be useful when potty training a puppy or for apartment or high rise building living. The links above will take you to the company home pages so you can get a little more information.

One of the ways in which you may be planning on saving some money in the purchase of your new artificial grass is to do the installation yourself. Whilst this may be a great idea in theory, it might be worthwhile to run some numbers just to work out whether you will be saving money or paying more.

To do a comparison of the cost of installing synthetic grass yourself and getting a professional synthetic grass installer to do it we can look at some rough price guides. The cost of a DIY synthetic grass installation can range anywhere from $2 - $8 a square foot depending on how many tools you already own and how many you have to hire or buy. The kinds of tools that you might require include a sod cutter and a compactor. A professional installation job can cost between $8 and $20 a square foot. The wide range is due to the variations in the actual work that may be required. If the installation involves many tight corners and unusual shapes, the time and work require will increase which will increase the costs.

Something important to note, the smaller the area that is to be covered by artificial grass, the higher the per foot installation costs are going to be. The reason for this is the equipment supply is going to be the same regardless of the size of the installation.

When you buy synthetic grass you should be supplied with an installation guide that will list all of the steps involved in the installation. This is a necessity for someone who has never done the job before because it’s not as simple as rolling out the grass and nailing it down. A lot of preparation work is required and there are a number of layers to be put down to ensure drainage and shock absorption is done properly.

It is critical that the surface onto which the artificial grass is going to be laid is flat without any bumps or potholes. Any slight deviation in the surface of the ground is going to translate into a permanent mound or hole in your new artificial lawn.

Following the installation there will also be some extra costs if you are going to prolong the life of your grass and give it the care it requires. Synthetic grass maintenance requires tools such as stiff brushes and brooms to regularly remove loose debris and to revive crushed or flattened grass. A leaf blower or vacuum will also come in very handy to shift dirt and grit that has become lodged deeply between the grass fibers. A yearly clean with a liquid cleaner will also revive and sanitize the synthetic grass for the year ahead.

Be careful with choosing to do your own installation. Check the warranty to see what a self-installation means. In some cases the act of not using a professional installation expert may void the warranty, which would leave you high and dry if something were to happen and you wanted some after sales support. Make sure you find out from the manufacturer what it means if you choose to do your own installation.

The price of synthetic grass is already expensive enough without running the risk of doing a poor job of installing it. If you are not proficient at performing landscaping work it would be much more advisable to get an installation professional to do the job, pay the extra costs and finish up with a yard that looks spectacular.

Indoor sporting facilities in particular make use of temporary synthetic turf solutions with the arenas required for a multitude of different events. We often watch tennis tournaments take place after a synthetic turf carpet has been laid down to form the centre court. Similarly indoor soccer courts may be assembled and disassembled quickly and efficiently when other events are being held in the facilities.

There has been work done in bringing the possibility of creating an outdoor synthetic turf system that can be installed over the top of a natural grass field for a short period of time before being packed away and put into storage. The idea is that the grass field could be turned into a multi-sport venue that is suitable for a wider range of sports, creating a hockey surface that can be placed on top of a football ground.

One of the attempts to produce a temporary synthetic turf surface was a modular system that can be assembled, moved around and taken up again when finished. The modular system would include the standard synthetic turf grass fibers that would then be infilled with a layer of particulate materials. The problem with the system is devising a way to keep the turf tiles from moving around under the pressure of heavy contact during game conditions.

To date these systems have met with only limited success with greater results having been achieved with removable natural turf systems that have been able to be brought in to replace damaged turf as needed. Work is still required to provide a solution that will be able to withstand the rigors of competition successfully.

In order to meet the safety standards synthetic turf installed in playgrounds must be soft but it also must be soft enough so that it is not abrasive if a child falls while running on it. A product such as FieldTurf’s FallSoft synthetic turf is installed with a water permeable safety pad that sits under the infill. This pad gives the surface a fall height safety of up to 9 feet which exceeds the ASTM requirements. It is possible to install different thickness shock pads depending on just how padded you need the surface to be.

There are quite a lot of underground base materials that are laid down before the actual synthetic turf is laid. The following cross section of the playground synthetic turf from Southwest Greens Grass Solutions gives you an idea of what is involve.

You can see the where the shock absorbing pad lies underneath the synthetic turf, the depth of the pad in this image is .75″ but this pad can be thicker if required.

When you’re looking for a suitable synthetic turf surface for any playground it’s the G-max score that is important. The G-max score of a synthetic turf system can be altered by adding or removing rubber granules on the surface. The shock pad underneath provides the base protection upon which to build the rest of the impact attenuating properties.

When you hear that golf professionals are also using and promoting the fact that they use these artificial putting greens you begin to get the idea that it is becoming a genuine resource. That’s obviously why there seems to be more and more of them being installed around the country. Installing a reasonably sized putting green with variations in slope, speed and hole settings are a possibility that will enable your game to move ahead in leaps and bounds.

Not Just For Putting

Many of the designs that are available from specialist artificial green companies are not merely restricted to putting. You can also choose to have a small bunker included in the design so that you can practice your bunker play as you blast out onto the synthetic green. Similarly a small chipping area from slightly longer grass can be set up to help the greenside short game. All of this can be squeezed into a surprisingly small area and will be easily suitable for the backyard.

Some companies are even able to offer you the choice of installing a green based on a specific course. Because tournament golf courses have been so exquisitely crafted, the grass used on the greens are already extremely similar to artificial grass anyway. It is not a stretch by any means to consider synthetic grass will be a close match. With improvements in artificial grass blade technology it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between real grass and fake grass.

The maintenance involved with keeping the artificial grass on the putting greens looking its best is constant although not demanding. Tasks such as lifting the pile of the artificial grass on a regular basis to keep the grass blades upright are required. This would be done with an artificial grass pile lifter, a rotating brush that passes over the grass, agitating the grass fibers and fluffing them up from their compressed state.

Companies are able to help their customers in the design of their residential putting greens, lending their experience to give advice on what design might work better than others. When you are installing a putting green in the backyard you want to make it one that will not only be challenging but also versatile enough to give you practice in all kinds of different situations.

As mentioned at the start of this piece, it has recently been revealed that Justin Timberlake has installed an artificial turf putting green in his house. That’s IN his house, not in the backyard of his house. Apparently the installation cost him $800,000 to convert a room. We mere mortals don’t necessarily have to take it to this extreme with an outdoor artificial grass putting green costing significantly less than this.

Golf is a popular sport the world over although over 50% of the world’s golfing participants come from North America. It is a traditional sport that has always been played on a natural grass surface, but the way in which golf courses are managed and the amount of water and chemicals used to keep the grass looking lush and green has meant that they have come under attack from conservationists and environmentalists. The high maintenance costs and the onset of water restrictions in certain areas have meant that there has been quite a lot of interest in the introduction of synthetic grass golf courses.

The important factor that must be studied before artificial grass on golf courses becomes a reality is the behaviour of the grass compared to natural grass. That doesn’t mean whether the grass looks like grass but how the grass interacts with golf equipment such as the golf clubs and golf balls.

Factors that have been tested to compare the mechanical properties between natural grass and artificial turf have been the rotational resistance, divot hole strength, green speed, distance after bounce and angled ball rebound. The idea is that in each case the expectation is that artificial grass must react in the same ways as you would expect natural grass to react under perfect conditions.

The perfect condition requisite is quite important because the reality is it is quite difficult to keep natural grass at its peak condition. Or at the very least, it takes a lot of work to keep natural grass at its peak condition not to mention quite a lot of water.

It has also been identified that there are three main areas to a golf course: the tee, the fairway and the green. In each of these areas the type of grass and the length of the grass blades would be required to be different in terms of height and thickness. A type of synthetic grass that would be suitable for the tee is different to the synthetic grass needed for the green, just as it is with natural grass. The studies that have been conducted have had to determine factors such as the optimum grass height, the best grass density, suitable drainage rate and, for the fairways and greens, the correct ball roll after it bounces.

As of right now the initial studies have been done and it is now possible to determine what type of artificial grass will be most suitable for each part of a golf course. There is no doubt that synthetic grass for golf courses is a realistic chance of becoming a reality, it will depend on how the players themselves come to accept it. Factors such as player comfort and the ever present question over how hot the course would get when the sun hits the artificial turf are still big factors that must be taken into account.

You may be forgiven for never having heard of shinty or know how it’s played. It is a Scottish sport and it is rather similar to hurling, the sport played with sticks in Ireland. Shinty is played with sticks called camans and a ball and is almost exclusively played in the Scottish Highlands. The game has been compared with field hockey due to the shape of the sticks used. The difference is that shinty allows players to play balls in the air and they can also hit the ball with both sides of the stick. There are a few other differences between the two sports but that gives you a general idea of what shinty is all about.

The problem the shinty governing body has been faced with is increasing problems with wet weather that has resulted in waterlogged pitches. No matter how natural the real grass pitches are, they’re not much good if it means that games are unplayable after prolonged wet weather.

The governing body would prefer to keep their sport on the natural grass surface that it has been played on for a couple of thousand years but because the artificial pitches are part of a wider community sports project they will be used. The changeover to the new pitches is still a long way off with testing of different synthetic pitches only just completed.

It sounds as though it is only a matter of time before the phrase ‘shinty turf’ is added to the modern lexicon. For the moment the situation is that the use of Shinty Turf has simply been approved, the next step is to actually build a facility that makes use of it.

Just because a company calls itself a synthetic grass company or an artificial turf company does not necessarily mean that they manufacture the product that they are selling. As a distributor they simply act as a retail agency for the manufacturer supplying sales staff and, in most cases, installation experts to lay the synthetic grass for you. It also means that you will be charged a higher price than if you bought the artificial grass wholesale direct from the manufacturer.

When you buy your synthetic grass you will want to be confident that if there are problems or queries that you want answered that the company that you originally deal with will be able to answer your questions. The after sale service of small independent distribution companies is unlikely going to be as thorough as that of the larger company. Indeed, there is no guarantee that the smaller company is going to be around after supplying you with your grass.

What you might like to be on the look out for is a synthetic grass company that announces itself as a producer and distributor or a manufacturer and distributor. Personally, I would feel a lot more comfortable dealing with a company that is involved from the first strand of production to the last stage of installation of the synthetic grass that they sell me. There will certainly be a lot more invested interest on whether or not the product meets my needs.

It may be difficult to find a local synthetic grass manufacturer and this is the obvious reason that synthetic grass distributors are so common. It would then be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the names of some of the top synthetic turf manufacturers so that you can be confident that the grass comes from a well-known and reputable company.

Data was collected from a number of different sites in North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Maryland. The full study sites sampled were two synthetic turf fields and a playground while additional samples were taken from four other synthetic turf fields and a second playground.

According to the EPA the results of the study found that the levels of the components that were contained within the samples were consistently below the levels of concern. The report goes on to warn, though, that the study was of a very limited nature. It further states that the characteristics and performance of the grass blades should also be considered separately to that of the rubber infill.

Some of the findings that were itemized in the official press release that came out on December 10, 2009 included:

• Particulate matter, metals and volatile organic compound concentrations were measured in the air samples and compared with areas away from the turf fields (background levels). The levels found in air samples from the artificial turf were similar to background levels.
• No tire-related fibers were observed in the air samples.
• All air concentrations of particulate matter and lead were well below levels of concern.
• More than 90 percent of the lead in the tire crumb material was tightly bound and unavailable for absorption by users of the turf fields.
• Zinc, which is a known additive in tires, was found in tire crumb samples. However, air and surface wipe monitoring levels of zinc were found to be below levels of concern.

Now the question that should be asked when reading about this particular study is does this clear crumb rubber infill as a safe product to use. Unfortunately the answer is still a resounding no. There are many cautions and caveats surrounding the way in which the testing was carried out and the type of samples that were taken, both air-borne and physical specimens.

What the study does is provides a framework around which future studies can be based and can be used in determining what form future studies are going to take. It’s still an issue that requires more information to be independently gathered because according to the Synthetic Turf Council there are more than 4,500 fields, tracks and playgrounds in the US that are covered by one form of synthetic turf or another.

So why would the owners of a football stadium choose to use blue artificial turf instead of the more obvious green?

For a hint at the answer we turn out attention to Bronco Stadium at Boise State University in Idaho. Bronco Stadium is also known as “The Blue” and the current blue surface is the 4th blue artificial turf surface that has been installed in the stadium. Bronco Stadium was first fitted with the standard green AstroTurf in 1986 but it then switched to blue in 1992. It was upgraded in 1995, AstroPlay was then installed in 2002 and then the 4th blue field was installed in 2008. This time the synthetic turf was supplied by FieldTurf.

Gene Bleymeyer is the Boise State athletic director and came up with the idea of dyeing the field blue saying “I guess that I’m the type of person that when I paint my house I paint it a different color so the neighbors notice you did something”. He basically decided that if he was going to spend so much money on a new artificial turf field he would make it stand out. Blue certainly stands out.

The blue artificial turf has succeeded in giving the school a certain notoriety and has given it more attention than it would otherwise have gotten. It is now a valuable branding tool used by the collage and is now worth more than the original cost to install it.

Other fields have since followed suit with the University of New Haven recently opting to make use of a blue field. The other owners of blue fields are high schools from various regions around the country.

So is the desire to stand out from the crowd a good enough reason to not only use an artificial turf but to turn it the most unnatural color for a supposed grass surface as possible? It’s certainly a move that has paid off handsomely for Boise State University.