bigslick7878
06-09-2009, 04:38 PM
Anyone know anyone that has a heating system for their soil?
Probably not,but last night I was randomly thinking about what it would take to keep the grass green deep into winter and the only thing I thought of was to keep the soil warm.
Professional sports teams who have natural grass have these systems in place in the stadiums and practice facility to aid in growth year round.here is an article I found on the Denver Broncos field....
http://www.grounds-mag.com/mag/grounds_maintenance_turning_heat/
Turning Up the Heat
By Steve and Suz Trusty, Sports Turf Managers Association
Manipulation is key to your turf care program. You manipulate turf height with mowing; you manipulate turf growth patterns with fertilization. Sports turf managers of fields used by professional teams may take that manipulation one notch higher with temperature control of the root zone.
WARM UP
Ross Kurcab, CSFM, is Turf Manager for Invesco Field at Mile High, the game field of the Denver Broncos football team. After serving that same role for the Broncos' practice facility, he applied his experience with extensive research to assist with the field development specifications for the new facility. Soil heating is one element of that design.
Kurcab says, “The main reason we heat is to prevent ground frost, which generally occurs in late November or early December in the Denver area. Once the ground is frozen, the surface becomes as hard as concrete. That's not a safe field for play. An added benefit of our soil heating is we are keeping grass living, growing and recuperative, which provides a better playing surface. In more southern areas, where the primary warm-season turf used on athletic fields is bermudagrass, the major purpose of soil heating is to keep the bermudagrass growing longer into the winter for field safety and playability.”
The crazy SOB like myself who is obsessed with grass would consider it for my house if the price wasn't too ridiculous. I can keep my grass looking good longer than everyone else in my neighborhood by a long shot,but even longer would be nice.
So anyone have any knowledge about these systems?
One other interesting thing...aeration at the end of Jan...in Chicago!!
Ken Mrock, Head Groundskeeper for the Chicago Bears, says, “We have a heated footprint 210 feet by 400 feet at the Halas Hall practice facility. It's a hot water/glycol system with 14 miles of tubing located at an 8-inch depth on 10-inch centers. Our sensors are 6-inches deep. We use three 2-million BTU boilers just for field heating. The extended area provides heated space for the lined football field and a surrounding area for the individual position drills.
“This is the sixth year for our system. We start heating in mid-October, when the soil temperature drops into the low 50-degree range, and maintain it in the 50s gradually raising the level to a high of 65 degrees as winter advances. This keeps the surface from freezing, staying at 40 degrees right below the thatch level by the end of the playing season. Because of the conditions we're able to maintain with the heating system, the team only practiced indoors five times this past year, out of a possible 140 practices. The team practiced on the heated field for the last 8 weeks of their season. We core aerified on January 22 to get a head start for spring's mini-camps, which is a huge tool for our maintenance program. We then shut down the heating system to allow the turf to go dormant. We feel it has earned the rest after the extended season.
“After our first year with the system, we noticed that the heated field was a lighter green and behind the other fields in development as they came out of dormancy in the spring. We determined that the grass plants were taking up the available nutrients in the soil and developed a separate fertilization program for that field to equalize conditions by the start of spring.”
Probably not,but last night I was randomly thinking about what it would take to keep the grass green deep into winter and the only thing I thought of was to keep the soil warm.
Professional sports teams who have natural grass have these systems in place in the stadiums and practice facility to aid in growth year round.here is an article I found on the Denver Broncos field....
http://www.grounds-mag.com/mag/grounds_maintenance_turning_heat/
Turning Up the Heat
By Steve and Suz Trusty, Sports Turf Managers Association
Manipulation is key to your turf care program. You manipulate turf height with mowing; you manipulate turf growth patterns with fertilization. Sports turf managers of fields used by professional teams may take that manipulation one notch higher with temperature control of the root zone.
WARM UP
Ross Kurcab, CSFM, is Turf Manager for Invesco Field at Mile High, the game field of the Denver Broncos football team. After serving that same role for the Broncos' practice facility, he applied his experience with extensive research to assist with the field development specifications for the new facility. Soil heating is one element of that design.
Kurcab says, “The main reason we heat is to prevent ground frost, which generally occurs in late November or early December in the Denver area. Once the ground is frozen, the surface becomes as hard as concrete. That's not a safe field for play. An added benefit of our soil heating is we are keeping grass living, growing and recuperative, which provides a better playing surface. In more southern areas, where the primary warm-season turf used on athletic fields is bermudagrass, the major purpose of soil heating is to keep the bermudagrass growing longer into the winter for field safety and playability.”
The crazy SOB like myself who is obsessed with grass would consider it for my house if the price wasn't too ridiculous. I can keep my grass looking good longer than everyone else in my neighborhood by a long shot,but even longer would be nice.
So anyone have any knowledge about these systems?
One other interesting thing...aeration at the end of Jan...in Chicago!!
Ken Mrock, Head Groundskeeper for the Chicago Bears, says, “We have a heated footprint 210 feet by 400 feet at the Halas Hall practice facility. It's a hot water/glycol system with 14 miles of tubing located at an 8-inch depth on 10-inch centers. Our sensors are 6-inches deep. We use three 2-million BTU boilers just for field heating. The extended area provides heated space for the lined football field and a surrounding area for the individual position drills.
“This is the sixth year for our system. We start heating in mid-October, when the soil temperature drops into the low 50-degree range, and maintain it in the 50s gradually raising the level to a high of 65 degrees as winter advances. This keeps the surface from freezing, staying at 40 degrees right below the thatch level by the end of the playing season. Because of the conditions we're able to maintain with the heating system, the team only practiced indoors five times this past year, out of a possible 140 practices. The team practiced on the heated field for the last 8 weeks of their season. We core aerified on January 22 to get a head start for spring's mini-camps, which is a huge tool for our maintenance program. We then shut down the heating system to allow the turf to go dormant. We feel it has earned the rest after the extended season.
“After our first year with the system, we noticed that the heated field was a lighter green and behind the other fields in development as they came out of dormancy in the spring. We determined that the grass plants were taking up the available nutrients in the soil and developed a separate fertilization program for that field to equalize conditions by the start of spring.”