A professional artificial turf court needs to be maintained: here’s how to maintain it ideally
The advantages of artificial turf over natural grass in terms of maintenance are very significant, but if you want to have an artificial turf court for padel, tennis or professional football and that it is always in the best condition, you have to carry out a series of specific tasks that will ensure that the artificial turf manages to maintain all its properties despite the large affluence of players.
Starting with padel and tennis artificial turf courts, we can divide the maintenance work into 3: weekly, bimonthly and annual.
These frequencies are indicative because depending on the number of players, the type of turf we have, the location of the courts, the type of sand, pollution, humidity and drainage among other things, the frequency of maintenance may vary.
Padel and tennis courts with artificial turf: weekly maintenance works
Padel courts with artificial turf use filaments and sand as a base, also some tennis courts and due to the pace of play this sand ends up piling up on the bottoms of the court, in the middle and in the areas close to the net, as these are the places where it is least trodden on.
For this reason, if we want all matches played on our courts to look their best and have perfect playability, we need to redistribute the sand on a weekly basis.
Special equipment can be used or simply by sweeping the sand from the areas where it accumulates to the areas where there is most wear and tear, which are the serving and transition volley areas.
Bimonthly maintenance work on professional artificial turf courts
This maintenance should be carried out every two months to prevent the fibres of the artificial turf from lying down, the court from becoming compacted and the physical properties of the artificial turf from being lost.
To prevent the paddle or tennis court from wearing out in this way, we must carry out the following tasks:
- Raise the hair or strand
- Remove the surface layer of sand to avoid compaction.
- Redistribute and level the sand load: always make sure that the height of the strands and the sand layer is correct, as this will prevent premature wear of the court.
If we have artificial turf maintenance machinery to do it every two months, we will have to work at a medium depth.
In the weekly maintenance, the shallower brushes or sweeps are used in order to redistribute the sand as quickly and easily as possible.
This process requires working at a greater depth to lift the strands and the layer of sand, and then redistribute and level it.
Annual maintenance works
The task that needs to be carried out less frequently is decompaction.
This is the most important task, because if a court becomes too compacted it can become a risk for the players, as the filaments and the base will lose their qualities, leaving a slippery and hard court.
The purpose of decompaction work on an artificial turf sports field is to maintain all the qualities of the base and the filaments intact, returning them to their original shape and keeping the base cushioned. The court is compacted when the pile or filament of the artificial turf has disappeared and this causes problems in playability and safety, so it is ideal to have machinery for the maintenance of artificial turf.
Whether with or without machinery, the aim is to achieve maximum depth when sweeping. After sweeping to the maximum possible depth, the sand should be redistributed again, and in this way the weekly and monthly work will be done in one day.
Although machinery is not essential for the maintenance of the artificial turf of a paddle court, it is recommended if we want to save time and we have a large amount of court. Given the qualities of the grass, the time that must be dedicated to it, as well as the economic effort, is much less than with natural grass, but if we want to make our investment in artificial grass as profitable as possible, minimum maintenance must be carried out.
If you would like us to inform and advise you about our maintenance services for artificial grass sports courts, please contact Verdepadel.