Clean Run - December 2017 - 48

My Turf Experience
By Monica Bush, photos courtesy of author

After running agility on rocks, stickers
and ultra-fine silt for a decade (Figure 1),
I was finally ready to invest in artificial
turf. Before coming to this decision, my
husband and I weighed the pros and cons
of arena sand, arena dirt, and real turf. We
came to the decision to use angular arena
sand with textiles for a surface that would
have an increased shear strength (resistance of the surface to slip when loaded
with a moving dog). The contractor had
installed several horse arenas, but never
the textiles. He leveled the field (Figure 2),
installed weed screen, brought in the arena sand (Figure 3) and textiles (Figure 4).
He attempted to mix the wet sand and textiles for an entire day, but the textiles and
sand never thoroughly mixed. I contacted
the textile company and they advised us
to continue mixing the two by wetting
and dragging the field for another day
(Figure 5). Unfortunately, the sand and
textiles never bonded and the surface had
very little shear strength, thus making a
poor footing for agility. This was a costly
mistake on our part, but fortunately the
contractor removed the sand/textile mixture free of charge. It was time to reconsider the footing substrate.
We knew arena dirt was out of the question due to a lack of clay in the local dirt
and the very dry climate of northern
Arizona. The result would have been a
loose and dusty surface similar to current conditions of the field. Options requiring watering on a regular basis, like
a real grass field or a clay/dirt blend were
also out of the question for us in the high
desert, where the cost of water is prohibitively high. Considering the constraints
of our geography, both in terms of cost
and viable local substrate options, we
concluded that artificial turf was our best
option. Given the high cost of new artificial turf, we chose used artificial turf,
48

which could be procured and installed at
a fraction of the cost of new turf.
After speaking with several used artificial
turf dealers, I chose Coast to Coast Turf
because they offered solid green sports
turf with rubber infill for 80 cents per
square foot. The owner was responsive
and helpful, and informed me that the
turf was from an indoor soccer facility. A
few other companies were less expensive,
but only offered striped turf or turf that
had been outside for an undetermined
amount of time. I decided against striped
turf when I was informed the stripes
could be any pattern on each piece of turf.
I did not want an art deco field of stripes
or the task of unrolling, mapping stripes,
rerolling and attempting to make six rolls
of artificial turf aesthetically pleasing. We
made the purchase with Coast to Coast
Turf and the turf shipped immediately
from Washington state via freight.
It was time to prepare the area for the
installation of the turf. I hired the same
horse arena contractor who had previously installed the sand/textile field to
install the artificial turf. Because of the
dimensions of the turf rolls (15 feet x 70
feet each and approximately 3500 lbs. per
roll), we decided to downsize the original
field (75 feet x 100 feet) to a more workable 90 feet x 70 feet to allow for a more
simple installation. To help prepare for
the install, I did some online research and
relied on the free Artificial Turf Supply
Installation Manual as a guide throughout the install: http://www.artificialturf
supply.com/PDFs/ATS_installpack.pdf.
First, the contractor leveled my field and
put a slight grade from west to east for
drainage. Due to the temperature swings
at a 7000-foot elevation, the guide recommended the artificial turf be installed
over ¾-inch minus road base packed to a

Clean Run | December 17

http://www.artificialturfsupply.com/PDFs/ATS_installpack.pdf http://www.artificialturfsupply.com/PDFs/ATS_installpack.pdf

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - December 2017