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: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/726375
30 SportsTurf | October 2016 www.sportsturfonline.com FACILITY & OPERATIONS of use on the synthetic fi elds was caused by low use on the high-school level fi eld. Expanded to the 20-year period the usage-hours were an average of 1,402,000. Comparatively the average usage-hours on the synthetic fi elds for the 20-year period was three times as much than as on natural grass fi elds. The average cost to provide an individual with an hour of use for the fi ve natural grass fi elds was $2.18. The average cost per individual player hour for the synthetic infi ll fi elds was $2.15. This fi gure emphasizes the importance of how necessary it is for synthetic fi elds to be adequately used. To be effectively used synthetic fi elds, with their life-cycle costs, need to be used for enough hours to be competitive with natural grass fi elds. FIRMNESS AND TEMPERATURE The relationship between month, surface temperature, and hardness can be seen in Figures 1 and 2. The months of June and July were the hottest month during the data collection with the synthetic fi elds' surface temperature measuring at over 140oF on the test points located in full sun (Figure 1). The hottest points on the natural grass fi elds' surface temperature were up to 100oF, but these areas had been worn by traffi c and recently sand and seeded, the unworn full sun areas were measuring in the 80's. Surface hardness on natural grass fi elds showed great variation during the rainy season from November through March with fi rmness levels reaching up to 1.5"of depression in poorly drained areas that could be judged unplayable (Figure 2). The synthetic fi elds in this study showed little variation in fi rmness even during the rainy season, maintaining a depression range between 0.2" and 1.0". The synthetic infi ll fi elds in this study were able to be as cost effect as natural grass with the player-hour use cost of 2.15 to the natural grass cost of 2.18 despite being twice as expensive over the 20-year period of analysis. This is likely to be credited to the synthetic fi elds' ability to maintain surface quality with high levels of use and little impact from weather. The synthetic surfaces maintained consistent surface hardness through the rainy season while the natural grass fi elds varied in hardness with the rainy season, losing stability. These results support the idea that synthetic fi elds are able to be just as cost effective as natural grass fi elds, despite their larger costs, by providing greater amounts of player-use hours. It also suggests that if suffi cient hours are used on the fi eld it could potentially be a poor investment depending on the situation of the facility. For example, a high school football coach who wants to protect the fi eld by not letting other groups use it would have would increase the cost per player-use hour. Brian Daviscourt is a graduate assistant; Alec Kowalewski, PhD, is a turfgrass specialist; John Lambrinos, PhD, is a landscape ecologist; Bart Eleveld, PhD, is an agricultural economics specialist; and Micah Gould is a graduate assistant, all at Oregon State University in Corvallis. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Surface Tem (oF) Month Natural Grass Monthly Avg. Surface Temperature 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Surface Temp. (oF) Month Synthetic Infill Monthly Avg. Surface Temperature 0 0 20 20 40 40 60 60 80 80 100 100 120 120 140 140 160 160 0 0 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Surface Tem (oF) Surface Tem (oF) Surface T Month Natural Grass Monthly Avg. Surface Temperature 0 0 20 20 40 40 60 60 80 80 100 100 120 120 140 140 160 160 0 0 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Surface Temp. (oF) Surface Temp. (oF) Surface T Month Synthetic Infill Monthly Avg. Surface Temperature