SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/86038
addressed as soon as possible; most chewing gums today never harden and with the intense heat in the field it becomes gooey and eventually spreads across the turf surface. To remove use either ice cubes or a freezing spray agent to harden the gum, chip it off and remove it. Weeds can exist and thrive in synthetic turf and if your turf is Removal of chewing gum is largely overlooked and needs to be surrounded by bermudagrass or any other creeping stolon-produc- ing grass, be prepared! These grasses tend to find their way into and under the synthetic turf and since temperatures on these fields reach optimal growing peaks before the surrounding turf, once they start spreading beneath they will find the drainage holes and send their shoots upward for the sun light. These plants become very hard to remove due to their sewing machine affect and in most cases will need to be treated chemically (as approved by the turf manufacturer) to kill them off. Easiest way is to prevent it from growing under from the beginning, understand it, look for it and act quickly when discovered. WEAR AREAS NEED ATTENTION Pay attention to heavy wear areas; these fields wear just like nat- ural turf with the exception that you can't grow it back in once it is gone, so don't let it wear out. Football—center of the field between the hash marks; soccer—penalty kick area, corners, goal crease; field hockey—goal crease, penalty arc; lacrosse—goal crease areas, center of the field where face offs take place. goal crease in as little as one year if not maintained. The infill mate- rial gets kicked or shuffled out, the fibers take a beating and break off quickly without the support of the infill material and before you know it, you have a big black area that is the backing of the turf that you will have to patch or replace. If you have to do this, use ei- ther the pieces you saved from installation or maybe cut out from outside the playing area so that it matches in color and type. Even after one year it won't be a perfect match (even if left on a Lacrosse, whether men's or women's, has the ability to destroy a roof top to sun burn like the turf on the field) because the sur- rounding fibers in the field will have seen use and started to mat out or break down and if you are patching it must have worn out. Contact the manufacturer or a reputable service company to save you the pains of having to deal with the patch. There are special materials that you will need and the local hardware store, big or small, does not carry them. Don't use Gorilla glue, liquid nails, and styrene bonding agents, and/or drywall screws or framing nails for repairs as they are not designed for synthetic turf and may become a liability nightmare later down the road. Painting may or may not have to be done on these fields de- pending on whether or not everything was inlaid during installa- tion. If you have to paint use only paint that is approved for synthetic turf field; it seems that every year some company an- nounces that they have synthetic turf paint, but do your homework and look at a company history and get recommendations. www.stma.org SportsTurf 15