Why hiring professionals matters, and why Southwest Greens of Illinois is leader in the industry for installation practices.

You might be asking yourself, “Can I install artificial grass myself?” While it is possible to install artificial grass by yourself, it’s not a simple task. The tools and equipment you need cost a lot, it takes a while to do it yourself, and you could void any warranties on the turf. Now, let’s look at why you should have your golf turf professionally installed and the best practices for artificial turf installation.

WHY PROFESSIONAL ARTIFICIAL GRASS INSTALLATION

Regardless if you’re adding an artificial golf green to your home, or a commercial golf course, having artificial turf installed professionally will save you headaches, time, and money — and, long-term, yield a better-looking green.

Saved Time

Even ”easy” DIY projects can often become a big to-do. Haven’t we all been there? Multiple trips to the home improvement store for supplies and tools we didn’t realize we’d need, plans not going according to plan, multiple days of back-breaking work? By having your turf installed by a professional, you will save time, and be able to enjoy the greens sooner.

To properly install artificial golf greens, must level the ground, add a base of crushed aggregate, add padding, lay the turf, add infill, and roll the turf to ensure ideal playability and to make it look like real grass. Trimming edges to have clean borders is challenging and takes years of experience to get it right. All of this means you need some very specific tools and knowledge to execute correctly in order to avoid wonky sections or edges that peel up creating unpleasant aesthetics.

Difficult Soil/Landscape

Perfect soil is rare. Most property owners can attest to this. It’s very rare to be able to sink your shovel into the dirt without issues. Instead, we have to struggle with rocky soil, clay, or soil overrun with roots from nearby plants and trees in many locations. Even digging can become grueling work. Worse, if you’re cutting into roots, you could be hurting surrounding trees you want.

We’ve had to deal with obstacles such as boulders, old (or new) irrigation lines, and stumps on many of our installation projects. Each of these obstacles need to be repurposed or removed. Excavation also produces tons of soil you don’t want — what will you do with it? We regularly have to ship this unwanted soil offsite.

A professional turf installer can address all of this . So if you don’t want to do very difficult manual labor or don’t know what to do with your excavated soil, hiring a professional installer for your project is your best option.

Large Areas

When installing a golf green in a large area, seaming becomes among the most challenging parts of the turf to do correctly. Seeming is how two or more pieces are combined. The process is similar to carpet installation, when turf seams are blended correctly, they are not noticeable. When seams are not joined blended correctly, they’ll be noticeable and yield a terrible looking finished product.

Picture this: rolling up a poster or piece of paper. Have you always gotten the alignment just right when attempting to pull-off a good roll? Rather than a clean edge, you sometimes end up with paper sticking out on one side. This also is possible when seaming artificial turf. One tiny error at the start of the process will throw the whole project off and look awful when finished. Professional installers will have tons of experience installing seams and they will ensure everything looks great before they are finished.

THE SOUTHWEST GREENS WAY

There are three specific things that differentiate Southwest Greens of Illinois from everyone else in the turf industry — craftsmanship, guarantees, and customer service. We do not believe in one-size-fits-all artificial turf installations, and because of that, we’ve perfected the art and the science of Naperville artificial turf installation. We have built our process with more than 6,000 golf greens around the world under our belts.

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

• A base of crushed aggregate, which can be moistened and molded to create challenging breaks and undulations, unlike concrete.
• Next, we install a cushion pad, at a minimum, to assist the ball roll and shot absorption, then comes our state-of-the-art polypropylene turf material that’s used to emulate the vibrant green color, softness, and playability of regular grass.
• Then we in-fill the turf with a formulation of fine-coated silica sand that gives it the touch and feel of natural grass.
• Finally, roll the tops to give the effect of real bent grass green. Options include the installation of first and second cuts fringe, sand traps, bunkers, fairways, and roughs.

You can watch our video on our installation process here.

READY FOR YOUR GREENS?

Make sure you view our grass collections. We are here to help you when you are ready. Contact us to get a quote on your project — whether it’s a backyard putting green or a full-blown golf course, we’ve got you covered.