January 2022, A Highly Technical Whirlwind

12 months ago 55

Besides launching our new turf maintenance program, 2022 has been off to a crazy start, you could say it�s been a technical whirlwind. We�ve completed 9 projects this year to date, totaling 3651 square feet. It�s not been a...

Besides launching our new turf maintenance program, 2022 has been off to a crazy start, you could say it�s been a technical whirlwind. We�ve completed 9 projects this year to date, totaling 3651 square feet. It�s not been a simple January, but the crew has really knocked it out. For me personally, 2022 will be the year of discipline and data � I have some fun stuff about our projects last week that I�d like to share.

January week 3 was a week of small technical projects that showcased our crew�s abilities

Week 3 saw 5 jobs, totaling 1183 square feet. None of these jobs were �standard;� two jobs were neighbors creating a dog run on their sides of their shared fence, a small yard getting a big overhaul in Indian Rocks Beach including turf and pavers, a turf repair replacing burnt turf for porcelain tiles, and a turf-over-concrete extension at the dog bar as well as a repair on some of their old turf.

The Neighbors (210 square feet, each)

We finally saw two neighbors come together for a unique solution to a problem created by how their dogs like to play. Now their dogs have a durable run for playing from their respective sides of the fence.

Our tier 3 turf, �Fresh Cut� is used on both sides. On the left we have landscape edger separating the turf from red mulch and landscaping where as the right side utilizes a paver border from what will be new sod.

We�ve been waitng for a long time for a project in which two neighbors worked together and this did not disappoint. The tricky things we had to work around with this job were turfing a narrow area between landscaping and a fence, separating turf from natural grass and a long seam with a fence running down the middle.

This project took this shape because the left neighbor has 5 dogs (4 of them dachshunds!) and the right neighbor has 2 dogs (1 of them a 9-week puppy golden retriever!); when the dogs are out, they run back and forth along the fence playing with eachother. This destroyed both yards and also left the dogs tracking a lot of dirt into the houses. They called turfit and the rest is history!

We used Vigoro-no dig edger for the landscaped side as well as some fresh mulch which came out great. To seperate the turf from natural grass, we used a row of 6�9 pavers. This is one of our favorite ways to seperate grass from turf or to terminate turf in general; the pavers provide a stark contrast to the turf and provide more durability to the project by essentially providing a concrete barrier to keep the base contained and keep weeds and other hazards from damaging the turf border.

The seam running under the fence was completed with talent and skill from Lindsey and the crew. The base was screeded to an equal level on both sides and we were able to get the two pieces of turf close enough together between the rungs of the fence to make both project look like one contiguous run of turf.

Small Backyard Overhaul (247 square feet)

�Fresh Cut� turf and Belgard Cambridge Amaretto pavers complete the beach-oasis feel of this Indian Rocks Beach condo.

This customer came to us wanting to transform his formerly-dirt backyard on the beach. His family needed a safe-space for their child and dog to play as well as a larger flat surface (the whole yard is at a considerable slope) for a dining table.

Though this job was only around 250 square feet, a lot went into it! We had to use close to 8 tons of crushed concrete to bring up the area for the paver pad as well as get the slope right for the rest of the turf. The gate in the bottom left hand side of the above picture was the only access point to the space which also made things a little tricky. The crew did a fantastic job using �guerilla turf tactics� to make it all work on the small project site on the beach�. parking alone is hard enough to find when we�re working out there!

Replaced Burnt Turf with Tiles (16 square feet)

Unfortunately, turf doesn�t do well with fire pits. We always recommend pavers, concrete, or stone for your firepits if you want to include that in your turf project. In this case, a customer burnt their turf with a gas pit placed directly over it. It was probably a close call, but it didn�t work out for the turf in the end.

For this turf repair, the burnt turf was removed and a concrete slab sub-base was added for the tiles. These porcelain 2? square tiles from Lowe�s will be a perfect fire pit spot!

For this job, we removed the burnt turf, dug out our base (I will have a future post about how quality our base was on this job�. so hard to excavate!), poured a 4? deep concrete slab, thin-set 2? square porcelain tiles to our slab. Check out the instagram post on my vlog here to see how it happened, live: https://www.instagram.com/p/CY95DLwvEeG/

The Dog Bar (500 square feet)

One of our favorite places of all time! What a pleasure it is whenever we get to work there. Before the new year, we were given the opportunity (THANK YOU, FRED!) to turf the chill-zone. They were having some drainage issues because the old turf had been glued directly onto the concrete. It came out so great that Fred wanted to extend the chill-zone turf out near the front entrance and dog check-in area!

�Ameripet� k9 turf warming up the entrance area at The Dog Bar, St Pete!

The k9 turf we used for this job is truly an impressive product. Anyone looking for an extremely durable, commercial grade k9 turf should definitely ask us about the turf we used at The Dog Bar!

We did a proper turf-over-concrete installation here using AirDrain tiles from AirField Systems. Mannnn, I love working with these tiles! The finished product comes out so clean and the drainage is truly incredible. Imagine turning your entire patio into a drain! I have the whole project outlined step by step on the instagram vlog here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZAlm0BPjLi/

Besides this awesome turf extension, we also helped The Dog Bar with the seams on the old turf in their main yard. The previous installers used a single line of liquid nail in an attempt to seam the turf together. That probably wouldn�t have held even if dog bar wasn�t seeing 200+ dogs per day. We did about 300 linear feet of proper seams using our preferred high quality turf adhesive and seam paper. Took about 7 gallons of glue!!