Artificial Turf. Pro Tips for Beginners. Install your own Fake grass - Part 2

Speaker 1: So while we're building retaining wall here in Minnesota, Phil and his crew are gonna be down in Georgia doing the rest of this artificial turf installation project. No, I'm just gonna tell you a little something about Phil, and Eduardo, and his crew, I've never actually met anybody better at doing what they're doing. Today they're gonna walk you through step by step, everything that you guys need to know to wrap up this project on your own. If you're thinking about doing artificial turf, these are the guys to go to.

Speaker 1: If you guys are interested in knowing what we're doing, Zander, pan back, I'll let these guys see the overall scope of this project.

Zander: All right.

Speaker 1: While they're down in Georgia working, Tim, Lane, Zander, and I are gonna be building a brand new entryway to this building. And this no ordinary entryway, because the retaining walls that we're gonna be constructing ...

Speaker 1: This is gonna be so cool, the reason they say it like that, because this is going to be cool. Because literally, what we're going to be doing is showing you guys, is we're going to be tying these retaining walls together. We're not tying them to the building, that's actually a big misnomer. You can never, ever, ever tie a retaining wall to a structure. Don't ever let an engineer tell you that, because I've actually had an engineer try to tell me that. You can't ever do that. But, in this case, we're allowing the walls to free float away from the structure, but tying them together. We've got one here, one going on there. Make sure you guys stick around, because we're gonna show you step by step all the insider tips, tricks, and heck, we were just doing it earlier, showing these guys how to knock the slag off the blocks. It's gonna be an awesome project, that one. But, enjoy today's artificial turf install.

Phil: All right, some of the tools that you're gonna need to have to install the artificial turf are this, number one is seam roller. What this tool does is allow you to roll the seams together, so when the two pieces of turf come together, you can blend the fibers from one piece to the next, making that seam look flawless.

Phil: You're gonna need a straight carpet knife. One of the things that I recommend when you're picking your blades is that you choose a square end blade. This is a straight cutting carpet tool. A lot of the tools that we're using come from the carpet industry. When you're coming the back of the turf down to width, this tool makes it fast and easy to go down a straight line. You can choose to use this, or you can use your straight blade knife.

Phil: This tool is one of my favorites. This allows me to actually place this tool in between the turf, and I can cut from here any type of radius that I want. The cool thing about this is I use this on all kinds of projects like swimming pool projects. When you wanna get really nice, organically curved, flowing, serpentine shaped bed lines. Having a tool like this allows you to freeform those cuts. That's one of my favorite ways to do it. It also allows you to add your own little signature to each job.

Phil: I'm using either eighth inch, or 16th inch notched trowels to spread the glue that's gonna go on the seam tape. I'm gonna show you that specific installation a little later on. You want to make sure that you're using notched trowels. If you're using the correct glue, and we've talked about that glue in another part of this video, then you'll be using this notched trowel. It's about the consistency of mayonnaise when that glue goes on. By getting these notches, it allows you to have adhesion over the urethane backing on the turf.

Phil: This is a stretching tool. By placing this tool here, and kicking it, it will allow you to stretch the carpet. This is great when you're trying to blend the seams together and you need just to get a little bit more room out of that turf, you just kick it, and you stretch it a little bit.

Phil: These are primarily the best carpet and cutting tools that you want to make sure you have in your toolbox.

Speaker 1: All right, before you guys get started doing your own artificial turf installation, you need to have the right tools. They're not gonna look like your typical landscaper tools where you've got sledgehammers and levels. Actually, this is a dead blow hammer. Some things are gonna be universal, but what you're gonna notice right away is that the tools you need to actually complete this artificial turf installation project, look more like tools you would use on a carpet installation job.

Speaker 1: And when the heck do you use this?

Lane: Roots.

Speaker 1: Oh.

Lane: It's good at chopping roots.

Speaker 1: All right. Let's go to Georgia, and see what you guys need for your job.

Phil: There's a few parts of the installation where you're gonna want to slow down and take your time. One of it is when you're cutting the turf to size. You want to make sure that you triple check all of your measurements, and you don't want to cut it incorrectly, because you obviously can't put the turf back together. We're using carpet knives to cut it. I've always encouraged the guys, Eduardo is taking his time with it.

Phil: You want to see how you want to go right in between these tufty lines. If you cross over that line, you're gonna have uneven turf, and it's not gonna allow the two seams to line up. What we're doing is just taking our time to go right down the middle of those tufty lines, to get a very straight cut, so when we go to line it up to the piece next to it, adjacent to it, it will line up correctly.

Speaker 1: You want me to start feeding you black tail?

Lane: Nope, I gotta get this one going here in the right spot. We gotta start out three inches past the wall.

Speaker 1: Okay, well I'm gonna set a few down here so we can just slide them into space.

Speaker 1: Next guys, you're gonna meet Eduardo. He kinda reminds me of a Mexican Frankie. Thinks dude is freaking phenomenal when it comes to pavers, when it comes to artificial turf, his attention to detail is insane, you guys are gonna see that right now. I absolutely love this guy. He's just a heads down, get it done kinda guy. A man of few words but big actions, I guess would be the way that I would put it.

Speaker 1: And Eduardo, if you ever see this video, and you want to come to Minnesota, I got a job for you. I'll even shave my head and you can call me Phil if you want to, I don't care.

Eduardo: I just try to get rid of this thing, because you need to cut it like we did over there. By the time you put the two pieces together, you gonna have a nice tie seam.

Phil: Okay. You cannot use this to connect to the other piece?

Eduardo: Nope.

Phil: You can't really use this as your seam tape, is that right?

Eduardo: Yeah, because you see this right here? It's unfinished. It don't look too good.

Phil: How far do you cut in?

Eduardo: You can cut one or two lines.

Phil: One or two lines?

Eduardo: Yeah, that's it.

Phil: All right, this is the fun part. This is where we're gonna move the putting green surface into place. Again, we've got two pieces. We've got a 24 foot by 15 foot piece going here, and a 24 by 15 going here. It's gonna give us a total rectangular width of 30 by 24. Now, the actual width is gonna be closer to about 30 by 23 and a few inches, and then of course, we're gonna be rounding and radiusing the corners. But you gotta make sure that the putting cups are installed, which we're finishing the last one right now. And then they'll be able to move forward with cutting this turf and seaming it.

Phil: What we're gonna do after we get the turf just laid down temporarily is we're gonna take a spike, and we're gonna go ahead and put it where the hole is. That way we know not to step there, not to try to mess up that area. When we're done, we'll cut out the holes. It's gonna be the last thing we do after we get the turf in and seamed together. That's what they're doing right now is feeling around for where the hole is. That way they can find it and put the spike in.

Phil: What are you doing Eduardo?

Eduardo: I try to make the mulch as straight as I can. You can see right here, barely touch both.

Phil: You want to get them as close together as possible?

Eduardo: Yep.

Phil: That looks nice.

Phil: Those scissors are offset scissors used for cutting carpet, and they're also great for cutting the edge of turf. It's a little bit harder to do what he's doing if you're trying to just trim up a small amount with the razor blade, that could be pretty difficult. By using these offset scissors, you can get very fine cuts and real small slivers if necessary. This is definitely one of the tools that you want to keep in your toolbox. It's not expensive, but it does go a long way when you need it.

Phil: What we're doing now is we're installing the seams. We're gluing them together. And this part is critical to getting these seams to look absolutely perfect.

Phil: What the guys are doing down here is they're laying on the turf bond glue. And notice that the glue is green, that means if we have any squeeze out in the glue, it's not gonna be as noticeable as if the glue were white. One thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to use carpet adhesive, you don't want to use liquid nails, or any other type of product other than the approved turf glue.

Phil: The guys are laying it out right now with a notched trowel. This is a 16th of an inch notched trowel. By spreading it evenly across all of the seam tape, it's gonna ensure that we get a great adhesion. These seams will never, ever come apart.

Phil: We've just put in the glue onto the seam tape now it's time to bring both pieces of the turf together. And what Eduardo's doing is he's lining them up very carefully. He's using the seam roller to get these fibers to hang over just a little bit. You don't want them standing up straight, or else it looks like the two aren't married together. It's critical that these two pieces fit real tightly together.

Phil: He's gonna go along the edge and he's gonna put in spikes to start to place that turf. As he works his way up, he's gonna make sure everything stays in alignment. When he's all done with that, he'll go ahead and put the spikes all the way into the ground. And as that glue begins to cure and to dry, it's gonna become a permanent weld, almost, between the two pieces.

Phil: Once we get the seams cut, what he's gonna do is he's gonna go in and pin nail this on either side of the seam. You can see, what he was working to get is this. This is how you want these seams to line up, just like that. They're coming together perfectly. If you take your time- if you try to rush this cut, that's how it gets uneven. Soon as it gets uneven, the seam is gonna be very visible. Even if this gets off by an eighth of an inch.

Phil: These are the nails that we're using to secure the turf to the crushed down base below it. This is a six inch twisted shank galvanized nail, readily available at big box stores. A lot of turf installations use a seven inch non spiral shank nail, but they are hard to come by. Gutter spikes are a pretty common example of what you can purchase. There's some specialty companies that sell turf spikes, but I needed something in our turf applications, that we can run to a big box store, purchase, and use and never, even if we run out of them, we can easily go pick up more of them without having to special order. And this nail has been used on almost all of our turf applications with great success. They don't pull out of the ground, they secure very easily. This is what I would recommend using on your turf application.

Phil: This is one of the last steps in the installation process. What we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be taking this drop spreader and using it to install the infill sand. And we're using a fine grit infill sand in order to cover the putting green surface. When we transfer over to the fringe's surface, we're gonna be using a medium grit sand, because there's more fibers to go through. This fine sand is gonna work really well to drop in between the turf. And then we're gonna take a power broom, broom that all in, and that sand settles very easy to the bottom of the turf, adding weight to it, adding UV protection to the urethane backing, and allowing these fibers to always stand straight up. One of the cool things about this sand, is the more you add the fast the stream is going to roll.

Phil: We're gonna start by adding approximately one and half pounds per every square foot of turf.

Phil: This is a must have tool if you're gonna be installing artificial turf. This is a power broom, it goes with the steel multi tool attachment. This power broom will allow yOU to brush up the fibers of the turf. When the turf comes, it's actually directional. You want to watch which direction you're laying that in.

Phil: Here I am with a piece of turf here. I want to show you up close that this turf is naturally laying in this direction. It's actually gonna be turned around 180 degrees to face the house. We want to be able to stand these fibers up on it's end. The way we do that is with that power broom. And while we're brooming, we're working in the infill sand into the base of this turf. Our goal is to protect this UV backing.

Phil: On the back of the turf, you have a urethane coating. That is so that these tufting fibers will have something to grip to, and also to keep all the turf together. But if sunlight is allowed to hit this urethane coating, it will begin to degrade it very quickly. The purpose of that infill sand is to create a protective barrier so that sunlight cannot hit the urethane coating, and it's not going to degrade it. The other two purposes of the infill sand are to weigh the product down, and to allow the fibers to stand up.

Phil: One of the first steps to prepare for the infill sand is to take the power broom and go ahead and brush up all of the fringe turf. This has several functions, it allows the fibers to stand up, and the way it works is through heat, friction, and static electricity. By brooming it, it creates all of that, and these fibers naturally want to stand up. They want stay that way until we actually go ahead and put in the infill sand, which we're gonna do next. But you can see behind me that the sand is already on the green. We don't need to power broom the green first, since it's a different type of fiber.

Phil: One thing to take note of as he's brooming is, notice how he is brooming all of the sand back to the center of the green. That is why our broom rotates backwards, and not forwards.

Speaker 1: Hey Phil, turn it off. Here's a general rule of thumb, when you're trying to talk on camera, it helps a lot if you don't have the equipment running in the background. That way people can actually hear what you gotta say.

Speaker 1: Now that you guys can hear me a little bit better, let me know what you think of today's video. We've got another one that we can produce if you guys are interested in learning some of the tips and trips that only the pros use when they're building and installing artificial turf projects. If you want it, we'll make it and put it together for you guys. But I gotta hear from you.

Speaker 1: Now, make sure you guys stick around, because we're working on this project and I think this one's pretty cool. We gotta load this debris into the truck over there. After we get that loaded, we're gonna start building on the retaining wall next.

Speaker 1: All right, take it away Lane.