Artificial Turf on Sports Pitches

Artificial turf has become increasingly popular over the years, and is a good, sturdy alternative to real grass. It is mainly used in sports arenas where games would be played on grass, such as football or hockey, as it is low maintenance and hard wearing. As techniques have progressed, artificial turf now looks amazingly realistic, and is finding it's way out of sports arenas and into areas such as office garden spaces as well as residential properties.

There are a few different types of artificial turf, and they are named according to the way they are made and laid. The main three types are unfilled, sand dressed and sand filled.
Unfilled artificial turf is sometimes also called water based, and as the name suggests, the pile of the turf is unfilled. This type of artificial grass requires water, which is why it is sometimes referred to as water based. This can be done by prolonged watering of the turf before it is used, for instance for a football game, and sometimes it is also necessary to water it during the half time break, if for instance it is a particularly hot day. Most sports grounds favour this type of artificial turf as it is much gentler on the players as the water minimises any abrasions.

Sand dressed artificial turf is where the pile of the turf is filled to around 6-7mm of the tips of the blades of "grass" with fine sand. The sand is not visible in this type of artificial turf, and for this reason sand dressed pitches can sometimes be confused with unfilled pitches. However, any player sliding along the pitch will be able to notice the difference as the sand will be much more abrasive than on an unfilled pitch.

Sand filled artifical turf is almost completely covered in sand. This makes the field quite hard, and for any player sliding on it, the abrasiveness of the sand will be very noticeable! A sand filled pitch will result in a slower ball speed in comparison to that of an unfilled or sand dressed pitch.

There is no real advantage or disadvantage when it comes to choosing the type of artificial turf you want to use, the main thing you want to take into consideration is the type of sport that is going to be played on it with regards to things such as ball speed and of course the amount of player contact. If you are looking to use artificial turf for a rugby pitch for example, you are not going to want to use sand filled turf for the sake of the players!