synthetic turf with rubber infill

[Tony Neville]

Silt from a near by creek washed across indoor soccer fields leaving about an inch of muck! We are use a 110 gallon waste tank as a giant filter box to catch the rubber infill, sticks, leaves and assorted stuff. Anybody have an idea for a better way to do it?

The manufacturer says to pressure wash it, however the silt stays on the rubber creating a dust issue. Any thoughts?

As for the Material think green plastic shag 2 inchs long with rubber ground up smaller then grains of rice.

 

[Scott S.]

looks like a giant PITA. so do you have to sort threw the waste to get the rubber out?

 

[Tony Neville]

Yes we are trying to save as much as we can, but they know that there will be some lost.

No it has not been much fun! Looking for something faster/easier or even better!

Tony

 

[renegade_cowboy]

squeegee? The top soil. Then pressure wash.

 

[The Great Oz]

Let it dry and break it up with compressed air. Vacuum through screen.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Big pressure washer, high flow, high heat. See what the rental yard has.

The as Bryan says I'd try to use a fiberglass window screen, much like you would weak upholstery. (great idea Bryan!)

 

[Tony Neville]

Sorry this is from my phone. They did pressure wash it last time and it left way too much dust when it dried. The screen did not work. Holed glide seems to do the best. So far...

Tony

 

[Desk Jockey]

Sounds like a real challenge, I like those kind of jobs. A real PITA when you're doing them but they are also the most satisfying once completed.

Hang in there Tony!

Get plenty of pictures, it's not your run of the mill job.

 

[sweendogg]

the rubber granuals, are supposed to act like sythetic soil. Well with that much gunk that got tracked in there, it wouldn't be very sanitary to try and filter out I would think. Might be better off power washing and extracting with super large wet vacs. like the kinda that go on 55 gallons drumbs, then just have a bunch of drumbs that can be capped and move to the next empty one. After all cleaned up, have them bring in some more rubber. Seems like it you would have alot of time dumping that wast tank.

 

[Ron Werner]

need the Judson stadium cleaner that they built for the Astrodome


Pressure wash. Leave it to dry and wait for that light dust to surface, then dry vacuum it off, if its loose, or perhaps steam clean it.

Would encapping that dust work better?

 

[boazcan]

What if you take some strong window screen and wrap around the glide? Wrap it around and then put it on the wand. Would keep the pieces on the ground. Not sure how durable the screen would be.

 

[Scott S.]

how much of that synthetic rubber stuff we talking? how big are the fields? is it going to be like 6 or 7 55gal drums of rubber stuff? does the rubber float or sink?

 

[The Great Oz]

You made me laugh Ron. Hiding that much dirt would be a challenge!

I guess I could have explained better. If they have no interest in letting the field dry, you can pressure wash the bulk of the mud away and it will be a playable surface. Once the field is dry, you can blow the dry silt into the wind (if no one downwind objects) or vacuum the dry soil up. Rather than put a piece of screen over a wand, buy a screen door and clean a rectangle at a time through the screen.

Seems like you worked out a solution already though.

 

[sweendogg]

I know when they layed it out on the University football field, they brought in about 6 tons and after spreading it out, and raking it in. you couldn't tell it was there by site, but it the stuff feels amazing to walk on. I couldn't believe I was on a synthetic field.

 

[Tony Neville]

The Big Field is a Full sized Soccer field then the kids field is 1/3 the size.

We tried a screen door that we used to use on some questionable area rugs it trashed the screen did not remove any mud and took a lot longer. Will cut a piece of screen to try on the glide tomorrow.

We are going over it and vacuuming out as much mud as we can then going over it with a leaf blower to remove the debris and coming back to clean it. By using the spare tank to catch the "Gunk" we can clean for almost 40 min before it stops up the filter! It is slow and gets boring after the overwhelming sense of hopelessness!

The water line on the glass.

This is the next problem the water made a wrinkle that needs to be removed!

Tony

 

[Ron Werner]

it was an olympic sized pool there for a while!!

 

[sweendogg]

I've thinking of this all day.. but what about a sludge sucker for a pond?

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/ ... _200330909

 

[Tony Neville]

Well it seems that anything to keep from removing the rubber seals up under vacuum and ends up doing nothing. It's been fun hope to put it to bed tomorrow. 31 hours and counting.

Ran 2 vans to the tank and 2 - 3 wands out as we had the people

 

[The Great Oz]

While we're trying to figure out how to use our carpet cleaning equipment, someone else went ahead and designed machinery for the job.

http://www.redexim.com/redexim06.html