Why you should hire the professionals, and why Southwest Greens of Michigan is #1 for installation practices.

Perhaps you are asking yourself, “Can I install artificial grass myself?” Sure, you could try to install artificial grass yourself, but it is not a simple task. The tools and equipment you’d need are expensive, it takes a long time to do it yourself, and you could run the risk of voiding any warranties. Now, let’s learn why you really should have your synthetic golf turf installed by a pro following the best practices for artificial turf installation.

WHY PROFESSIONAL ARTIFICIAL GRASS INSTALLATION

Whether or not you’re interested in adding a golf green to your home, or you’re managing a commercial golf course, having artificial turf professionally installed will save you time, headaches, and money — and, long-term, give you a better-looking green.

Saved Time

Even small do-it-yourself projects can easily evolve into a big deal. Haven’t we all been there? Excessive trips to the big box store for tools and supplies we didn’t realize we’d need, plans not going according to plan, days and days of hard work? By having your turf installed by a pro, you will save so much time, and you will enjoy the greens sooner.

To properly install artificial golf greens, must level the ground, add a base of crushed aggregate, add padding, place the turf, add infill, and roll the turf to have the best playability and to make it look as real as possible. Cutting edges to have clean borders is also difficult and needs a good deal of experience to get it right. All of this necessitates some specialized tools and knowledge to do correctly in order to avoid messy sections and edges that peel up creating a terrible look.

Difficult Soil/Landscape

Perfect soil is rare. Most property owners will agree to this. It’s very rare to be able to sink your shovel into the dirt with ease. Instead, we work with stones, clay, or soil overrun with root systems from trees and plants nearby in many places. Just digging can become grueling work. Plus, if you’re digging into roots, you could be damaging surrounding plants you want.

On a lot of our turf installations, we’ve dealt with obstacles such as boulders, old (and new) irrigation lines, tree stumps, to name a few. All of these obstacles have to be removed or repurposed. Excavation itself also produces tons of soil you may not need — what is your plan to deal with it? We regularly have to ship this unwanted soil offsite.

A pro artificial turf installer can address all of this on your behalf. So if you’re not looking to do very back-breaking manual labor or don’t know how to handle your excavated soil, hiring an installer for your project is your best bet.

Large Areas

When you install a golf green in a large area, seaming becomes one of the most challenging parts of the turf to do correctly. Seeming is how two or more pieces are bound together. The process is like carpet installation, when turf seams are joined correctly, they’re not noticeable. Seams that aren’t joined correctly will be noticeable and give a disappointing finished product.

Picture this: rolling a sheet of paper or a poster. Do you always get the alignment just right when attempting to get a good roll? Sometimes you don’t get a clean edge, but end up with paper sticking out on one end. This same process is possible when seaming artificial turf. One tiny misstep at the start of the process will ruin the whole project and look terrible when finished. Professional installers will have a lot of experience joining seams and they will ensure everything looks great before they are finished.

THE SOUTHWEST GREENS WAY

There are three distinct things that separate Southwest Greens of Michigan from everyone else in the turf industry — craftsmanship, guarantees, and customer service. We do not believe in generic artificial turf installations, and because of that, we have mastered the art and science of Detroit and all of Michigan artificial turf installation. We have built our process with over 6,000 golf greens across the globe under our belts.

Take a quick look at how our artificial putting green installation process works.

• A crushed aggregate base, which can be moistened and molded to build up challenging breaks and undulations, unlike concrete.
• Then we install a cushion pad, at a minimum, to help the ball roll and shot absorption, then we bring in our state-of-the-art polypropylene turf material that’s used to recreate the vibrant green color, softness, and playability of natural grass.
• The turf is then in-filled with a formulation of fine-coated silica sand which gives it the touch and feel of organic grass.
• Finally, roll the tops to make the effect of natural bent grass green. Options available are installing first and second cuts fringe, bunkers, sand traps, roughs, and fairways.

You can watch our installation process video here.

READY FOR YOUR GREENS?

Make sure you take a look at our grass collections. We are here to help when you’re ready. Contact us to get a quote for your project — regardless of it is a backyard putting green or a full-scale golf course, we’ve got you covered.