Artificial Grass Maintenance

Synthetic-Turf-Installer.com Tip

Generally, maintain your artificial grass as you would natural grass - of course without the mowing, watering, fertilizing and weeding.

If you currently remove fall leaves and dog 'droppings', continue to do so once you install artificial turf. Get a good idea of what your 'personal' turf maintenance needs will be by assessing the ‘environmental’ conditions in your yard.

Lawn Furniture & Accessories
Kid swimming pools and lawn furniture left on your synthetic lawn for a sustained period of time will flatten your turf. Once you remove whatever has flattend your turf, simply rake your turf against the grain to get it standing again.

Foot Traffic
Foot traffic by you, your kids, and others will usually have a minimal impact on your turf. Exceptions are around swimming pools where traffic is generally higher. Simply rake your turf ‘against the grain’ to undo turf that’s flattened by foot traffic.

Dog Traffic
How much dog traffic will your turf experience? You’ll want to pick up your dog’s ‘droppings’, the same as you would on natural grass. The rest (along with the urine) you can wash away with your water hose. Or have rain water take care of it for you!

What about diarrhea?
Well, just use plenty of water from your hose to wash away the diarrhea.

Odors & Cleaning Gun
If you experience a lingering smell, you can periodically wash your turf with a mixture of a few drops of liquid dish soap per gallon of water. Consider investing in a Cleaning Gun that you can attach to your water hose.

A cleaning gun will allow for rapid cleaning of your entire lawn. Click Here to see an example of a Cleaning Gun available at Amazon.com

Note: Prior to using any soaps or other chemicals on your turf, check with your turf supplier or turf installer to make sure that it does not hurt your turf.

Extreme Dog Traffic
One doggie daycare has 50+ dogs running and playing on its turf for 1-hour every 2 hours. As you can imagine, the amount of hair that accumulates on the turf's surface, and thus the amount of maintenance required for the turf, is much more than yours would be with 1-3 dogs in your backyard several times a day.

Still, most dog hairs can be periodically raked. In most cases, you'll only need to rake up your dog's hair only once or twice per year. To be sure, check with your turf supplier, turf installer or other homeonwers who have artificial turf in their yards.

Soil Spillage
Consider "soil spillage" into your turf area from your planting beds around your turf perimeter and from tree rings. For example, if your dog likes to dig, he’ll likely dig dirt from your planting beds onto your new turf.

If this applies to you, count on periodically raking or sweeping dirt out of parts of your turf. Consider that you’ll likely never be able to remove 100% of the dirt. Ideally, you’d want to solve this problem before installing your artificial turf so that you never get dirt on your synthetic lawn. You should look to solve this as part of your Site Assessment.

Urban Litter/Pollution
Most backyards won’t experience this, but some front yards will. If your turf area is going to be exposed to ‘public’ traffic, assess how much pollution your turf will experience from cars, pedestrians and ‘walked dogs’.

Look at the current area and assess the kinds of debris (road debris, candy wrappers, beer/soda cans & bottles, ‘dog droppings’, etc.) are in your turf area.

Just because your putting in synthetic turf, does not mean these pollutants will magically disappear. You’ll still need to clean your artificial turf area.

Local Climate
Depending on where you are located, your artificial turf may be exposed to snow and ice. You can sweep or shovel snow and ice off of your turf. Some dogowners like to 'clear a path' for their dogs to run on during winter months.

In most cases, you will not need to use soap to clean your turf. However, you may want to 'spot clean' certain areas with soap, for example, to remove any lingering odors. Here's what you will and won't want to use...

Shampooing Turf
Mix a few drops of liquid dishsoap per gallon of water. Then brush this 'soapy water' onto the turf and then hose away.

If you want to clean your entire lawn, consider investing in a Cleaning Gun that you can attach to your water hose. A cleaning gun will allow for rapid cleaning of your entire lawn. Click Here to see an example of a Cleaning Gun available at Amazon.com

Note: Before applying any chemicals to your turf, check with your turf supplier or turf installer to make sure that it does not hurt your turf.

Bleach & Chlorine
In Synthetic-Turf-Installer.com's experience, undiluted bleach destroys artificial turf. Also, undiluted chlorine discolors artificial turf.

It's possible that bleach and chlorine diluted in water will not harm synthetic turf. However, check with your turf installer or supplier to be sure.

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