Synthetic turf vs. Natural Grass Athletic Fields Cancel The title field is required!

1. Jennifer Torres

   

   2 posts
   
   9/19/2013 6:09 PM

   I am a board member for my children's soccer club and fear our township is making a bad choice in installing a turf field rather than just natural grass. Anyone have some studies on the true cost, or do you believe it can be cheaper in the long run?

   
   
   
   
2. Rosenthal Gregg

   
   9/19/2013 8:09 PM

   I can give you some simple things to think about having maintained athletic fields in the past including the first synthetic field in Fairfax county, Virginia. The first thing they did not think about was what happens when a player no matter soccer or football, happens to bleeds or vomits on the field, a mess to clean up and the biological/medical issues involved. One must have a mixture of alcohol/water available at all times to make the field biologically sound for play to continue. Or what about when formal play is not happing and this occurs who is there to clean the field. Other issues that came up after field was finished, not thought about prior to construction was simply the field temperature during Hot summer days. The field is dressed with crushed rubber from recycled tires, during the very hot summer days in the Mid-Atlantic area day temperatures reach high 90's easy, the temperature on the surface of the field was well above 100 degrees! Unplayable to say the least, the air temperature close to the surface was over 100! Some of the things that we were lucky to have installed was an irrigation system, utilized to cool off the field (although it was temporary on very hot sunny days). This was also used to clean up the field after a lot of use. This field was very expensive to install and had a life span of maybe 10 years at best. I personally felt grass is better, natural easy to repair and replace as required, and one can move the lines around to move the wear if the field is big enough. We also had so many lines of different colors on the field for different sports, it was silly. Lacrosse, Football. Soccer, Men's, Women's, Adult, Kids. So needless to say both positive and negative as when it rained a lot this field had drainage and was good to go before others that were too wet. As one who returned to growing golf course turf, doing what I love, my thought is stick to good turf.
   
   GreggR

   
   
   
   
3. Clay Putnam

   

   33 posts
   
   9/20/2013 4:09 AM

   It is a misnomer to believe a turf field can pay for itself. A turf field, at a conservative cost of $750,000 with a liberal life span of 10 years equals a cost $75,000 per year; assuming the field was not financed. Some quick math will show that you can't possibly spend $75,000 on the maintenance of a natural field.
   
   The only way a turf field can be justified is if the the field is multi-use, by a lot of teams.

   
   
   
   
4. Melvin Waldron

   

   43 posts
   
   9/20/2013 8:09 AM

   Jennifer, I agree with Clay,
   
   Our high schools just installed 3 new fields last season and resurfaced one more that was already turf, (one is shared with local university).
   
   They were sold as no maintenance fields (I would get so mad listening to the radio call in shows, but I was driving and couldn't call in, they are different maintenance, crumb rubber still has to be redistributed or something like that), and the community bought into that with help I think from the Field Turf manufacture who helped sell them. Cost to install nothing to the school system, was done with community support. Even our band director was giddy about it. They learned awful quickly about the heat issue, band is the last period of the day and the kids were suffering. The only good thing was it was an extremely wet season and the fields remained playable. I can see part of their reasoning, the football team uses it, at some of the schools the soccer team uses it, (ours didn't until the new field was installed and they use it for some of their games and tournaments they hosts), JV and Freshman football plays on the field, the middle schools play football on the field, band practices on the field, they might host band competitions on the field, those are the pros they can take the abuse no matter the weather, but that would make them wear out faster too, the 10 years is going to be tough to stretch it out. I think they don't see the value of qualified turf managers; our school has a baseball field, football field, two soccer fields and two practice fields plus the school grounds.
   
   Right now I have heard that some of the studies are saying with the cost of the field, and then the replacement cost, it won't really start saving money maybe until the second surface has been replaced in 20 years. That I suppose would be true if subsurface work doesn't have to be done.
   
   Funny usually what causes grass fields to fail are the root zones, which are poor, for the synthetic field to work they have to spend that money on a drainage system, probably the same cost as putting in a nice drainage system for a natural grass field.
   
   If you could contact Dr. Brad Fresenburg at the University of Missouri who has done some synthetic turf research. They have some research plots of it at the turf farm. One of the research areas they conducted two summers ago was the actual surface temperatures in the afternoon with full sun. They saw temperatures reach 140 degrees, they also was looking at how much water was needed to cool it and how long the temperatures stayed down. I also thought they worked with the Rams on cleaning the turf. I would hazard a guess that Dr. Fresenburg is one of the top sports turf people in the country.
   
   I might be biased since I grow grass for a living, but I worked at a small university with a golf course and athletic fields and I know we didn't spend much to maintain the fields, of course they didn't get as much use as some fields might.
   
   Mel

   
   Melvin H. Waldron III, CGCS, Horton Smith Golf Course, City of Springfield/Greene County MO
   
   
5. Hood Austin T

   
   9/20/2013 8:09 AM

   My professor at the University of Tennessee has done quite a bit of research and talks about this. His name is John Sorochan. You might want to contact him at sorochan@utk.edu if you want to ask some questions, but definitely, grass over synthetic without any doubt in my eyes. Less injuries, less hazard to the environment, all kinds of benefits.

   
   
   
   
6. Steve Nelson

   

   0 posts
   
   9/20/2013 9:09 AM

   Clay Putnam, CGCS said: It is a misnomer to believe a turf field can pay for itself...
   The only way a turf field can be justified is if the the field is multi-use, by a lot of teams.

   
   
   This is the answer in a nutshell. I understand both perspectives- I work for a municipality with a gc, and many sport fields, both natural and synthetic, and I serve on the board (field coordinator) for an active rugby club with youth U8-U18, two mens teams, and a womens team.
   
   Municipalities and school districts are installing synthetics at an astounding pace because of the ever increasing use of the fields. There simply isn't enough fields- at least in built out areas like SoCal- to accommodate all the use requests and still have decent turf. For all the issues with synthetics, primarily the heat and the abrasiveness, they are still safer than a typical beat up field that has too much use.
   
   Example: my kid's Pop Warner has kids practicing on both natural and synthetic fields. The synthetics are brutally hot- imagine going through hell week on synthetics during typical interior SoCal August day of 100 degrees plus. They also tend to scrape you up due to the crumb rubber, but they are generally nice and cushiony, making it relatively safe on impact. The natural turf field, in contrast is hard pan bermuda, littered with bare areas and protruding rocks, and is hard as cement. While it is cooler and probably nicer to do conditioning on, once the hitting started there were numerous injuries- my kid was one of many that had a broken collar bone thanks to that nice natural turf.
   
   Generally speaking, when a municipality puts in synthetics, it is not about cost of maintenance. It is about attempting to accommodate as many user groups as possible while still providing safe playing fields for recreation. Some may talk about cost as a justification, but that is really to appease folks worried about the upfront costs. I wish they would just tell the truth about the costs as nothing is maintenance free.
   
   Austin you might find this interesting. When I was at UT the intramural fields were all dirt and Dr. Callahan was the turf professor at the time. He liked to play a trick on the senior turf students by making them believe the university was seeking the department's asssistance in converting the intramural fields to grass. He asked the students to get into teams and develop a complete plan for installation and maintenance. Well, after we all did this he sat us down and told us the correct answer was to install synthetic turf because the field was in use literally all day and closed after midnight. He wanted to teach us a lesson that natural turf wasn't always the answer, no matter how good we thought we were at growing it.