Football pitch cover

[henny]

got an event comming up mid september, 4/5 nights in a football gorunt 1000-2000 peeps , I need to protect the pitch.

 

got about £5k to spend covering the pitch, its 110m x 75m ish , sujestions please.

 

the event is on mon-friday with possible a cupmatch sat or sunday so it must protect the grass or be able to be rolled back during the day to allow the pitch to breath ?

 

thanks

 

henny

[the kid]

With my parents in gardening I can say that you can put down plastic sheet and its still going to be bad underneath unless its bone dry.

 

You can get something like lattice cover (its like a lattice of plastic and the grass pokes through{mainly seen in concrete form on car-parks}) but no idea where from or how much.

[djw1981]

Not sure what kind of event it is, but we used coconut matting last year for an outdoor gig, and the grass was mashed after 6 hours. And this was not hard core moshing either. Therefore I think your groundsman maybe slightly disturbed that the club has let the pitch be used so close to the event.

[the kid]

As a idea they I've just had what about a layer of metro/steel deck might be costly but in theory it should save a good propotion of the pitch.

[emj]

I would use a this company very helpful and friendly

they do a lot of this sort of work

 

www.rola-trac.co.uk

 

Rola-Trac Ltd

South Burlingham Rd,

Norwich, Norfolk

United Kingdom

NR13 4ET

T: +44 (0) 1493 750200

F: +44 (0) 1493 754050

[colourwatt]

In my previous life I found a product called Mypex, a woven polypropaline fabric availible in rolls 100m long and various widths, used very widely in horticultre.

Do a Google U.K. "Monro Horticulture" and they deliver free.

Using pvc sheeting is a crap idea, if it gets wet it will be better/worse than an ice rink. and your grass underneath will start to go bad even after only a few hours.

I seem to remember that a council in the northeast of the UK (possibly newcastle or Northumberland) has MYPEX to rent just for projects like this. Ask Star Hire Events about this source. Bromley Council, who run Crystal Palace Bowl have used this in the past.

[Nick Evans]

I guess it depends on how well you want to protect the pitch and how good the pitch is in the first place. For large events in football stadiums Terraplas is used. These are 1m square plastic tiles designed to create a space underneath so the grass is not crushed except in the corners, under the feet and along the edges (something like 96% is left untouched). It is translucent and has small holes in it to allow light and water in. I believe it was originally developed for Wembley Stadium but I could be completely wrong about that. On the downside it is quite labour intensive to lay, last weekend it took about 8 guys a couple of days to cover most of a pitch in Birmingham.

[mikienorth]

just been googling the same thing as nick, try eve trakway, they are named as the rental people for terraplas.

I used terraplas to cover an ice rink at my old job, granted, it's not as big as a football pitch, but with the help of around 10 people it was off the surface pretty quick, it took hours not days, at least.

Chances are it won't be cheap mind.

[Nick Evans]

To be fair it depends on how many people they throw at it and what the access is like. It can fly, especially on the out.

[djw1981]

If I read OP correctly, he wants to lay it for an event but roll it back between shows etc to allow grass to breathe. I think this will be tough to ensure you do that withour either a) causing more surface damage, and b) doing it the same each time so you pass all relevant H&S.

[Jivemaster]

If this is a FA member's pitch go to the FA, their pitch people and the club's groundspeople will NEED to know that the cover will be off in time leaving a PERFECT playing surface. You need to find a system that the FA and the club are confident with as there could be a cancelled match and town rioting and a policing bill all on your PLI PII. Someone else in the FA will have done this before, There must be all the ground staff from Wembly somewhere though finding one or more....

 

If you can, get the club to prepare the ground then the method and its faults (if any ) are theirs.

 

Also you could contact the RFU/L and the MCC/TCCB and your local rugby and cricket grounds for their advice If it's out of the cricket season you could perhaps "borrow" some greenstaff from the local cricket club.

[scuddy]

I have used various portable flooring types for flooring inside marquees and big top tents. The main types have been "portafloor" and "rolatrac". both are very useful and effective, tho no flooring will protect grass in the event of heavy rain as the flooring will just squish the ground and create mud when it is walked (or Danced!!) upon. The rola trac and porta floor can be split along the seams between individual mats (often only 10 by 2.5 inches) but you can split at any point and then roll up to the side tho rolling back down and getting the edges to meet up properly is quite a tall order. The problem with eve trackway is that you need a lorry or forklift to position it and this will cause huge damage. also any flooring system large enough to cover a football pitch will need a forklift to unload and position the individual pallets along the edge of the pitch so maybe some kind of access trackway would be a good idea. I don't think that on dry ground with good weather any harm will come to the grass tho it will turn yellow if covered for a few days or more. it will also get rather leggy so the grass should be left longer before the flooring is laid. It is a labour intensive job putting the flooring down and you need to be careful to mark out a centre line and work from that outwards if you want avoid deviation or gaps.

good luck