SportsTurf

April 2015

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.

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Pioneer Athletics Editor's note: Doug Schattinger, presi- dent of Pioneer Athletics, contributed this update. Have you ever noticed that a painted field looked slightly better right after it dried than after a particularly wet night? Have you ever stepped into an area you painted yesterday only to leave tracks as you leave the painted area? When paints are dry to the touch they begin to cure. Many solvent-based paints cure very quickly. However, water-based paints can take hours and sometimes days to cure. If a coating is not sufficiently cured, water can re-saturate the paint causing it to track or, in instances such as rain, run off the blade. Various additives and formulation tricks can speed up the curing process. However, that often means compromising plant health and coating flexibility. Many of the potential additives are very damaging to grass and the soil profile. Making paint cure too quickly will leave the coating too stiff, which will cause the paint to flake off the grass blade quickly in moderate traffic. Curing of grass paints is difficult because the plant itself is regularly releasing water. When you factor in cool weather, dew, and normal sprinkling, the curing process can take days instead of hours. Additionally, there are circumstances when turf managers have to throw a tarp over a freshly painted field. This can virtually stop the curing process. Fortunately, new technologies occa- sionally become available that give paint formulators an opportunity to make more environmentally friendly grass coatings that perform better for sports turf manag- ers. For example, a new resin development allows us to get a water-based paint to cure much more quickly, remain very flexible, and not damage grass. Research at various test sites through- out the US on bermudagrass, ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass has concluded that the new resin system does not harm grass after repeat applications. Due to these results, our team of chemists was given the chal- lenge to create a grass coating that had to 18 SportsTurf | April 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com Update on field paint technologies from the manUfactUrers Field Science While trying to create a solution to one problem, you sometimes create a coating that has unexpected characteristics.

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