[Closed] Artificial Lawn

Can't help with your question, but sharing thoughts, I was put off artificial lawn as I hear it gets rather hot in the sun making it unusable. Not sure if this is all brands but was enough to make me stick to my grass

Get a descent quality lawn as there is a big difference between the cheap and the better ones. I did my daughters lawn which was laid over a small concreted back yard. A few bags of sand underneath and rolled out the high quality lawn. Kids can run around and play happily. Held in place by gravity with a couple of bricks on the long side and one short edge underneath a wooden step. No issues with lifting.

Used so cheap stuff for a 3 foot strip outside the hot tub cabin and it feels horrid under foot and keeps rolling up at the edges despite repeatedly being pinned down with tent pegs, bricks etc.

It is very easy to install if you watch a few YouTube videos

100 quid a square metre sounds expensive!

Can't speak to the cost/quote but if you can/want keep an eye on Gumtree for roll ends etc, I recently got 4x4 metres delivered for £144. This is to go under a trampoline to hide the bare earth but was quite happy with that! This was Aberdeen btw.

enough to make me stick to my grass

Yes that's exactly the problem with plastic in the hot sun 🙂

Dundee

plastic in the hot sun

Problem solved.

My thoughts after having had it done in our old house. Main reason for doing it was similar - kids playing football 24/7 on the grass absolutely nailed it so we thought for ease of use we'll get some really top notch artificial stuff fitted. Absolutely brilliant stuff - can't remember the area but it was a couple of thousand fitted (using the best stuff available done by a specialist fitter etc). Had it down 2 years and by the end of those two years it was starting to look a bit knackered - lost its pile, looked really flat etc. We were selling the house so I wasn't bothered about getting them back to sort it but after initially being amazed at how good it was, was massively disappointed. Wouldn't do a whole lawn in it again (we are about to fit a 4m strip at the far end of our garden now for the kids new football "pitch" but the rest of the garden is staying proper grass.

One thing to bear in mind is the rolls seem to be a standard 4m wide, when I got a quote (sorting out the whole garden not just for the artificial grass) I either had to buy two rolls or put a big raised bed down one side of the garden (which is 5m x 10m). I haven't done it yet due to the overall cost (approx. £10k...) rather than deciding the grass was a bad idea.

The 30+mm pile multi-length and different tones etc. premium stuff looked pretty convincing to me but it's had to tell from samples and could only see photos of actual lawns which wasn't very helpful

We did our lawn on the previous house....never again.
Looked good for year 1, but then started to look tatty. Wasn’t cheap, can’t remember the exact cost but it was expensive.
We have a dog, he used it for wee’ing on, tried to get him not to but he still would. Anyway, it absolutely stank. I used to clean it with a wire brush and the cleaning fluid, but in the summer it would still stink. I’d be cleaning it most days.
(Weirdly the dog doesn’t wee on the current lawn, just used to do it on the artificial lawn)
The lawn never got too hot to walk on and never melted in the sun.

Lazy lawn - great products and sensible prices. We put down some Wonderlawn and the shock pad on to our old concrete yard and it transformed the space. Not sure if they have a product more suitable for your use.

I really wanted a fake perfect looking lawn but the fact it gets hot and my girlfriend likes to spend her summer laying on it it got vetoed pretty quick. On reflection and as already said there is a lot living in your grass so on that note I think if you can keep the real grass you should.

We have a dog, he used it for wee’ing on, tried to get him not to but he still would. Anyway, it absolutely stank.

This. We had in in the last house for all the same reasons as above. Was about £50sqm fitted. Not the top end stuff but still pretty good. After 4 years it was just starting to look a bit tired but still had loads of life left in it. Did get a bit hot in the sun, but those really sunny days are rare and it was still usable.
But the smell of dog wee - 2 bitches in the house using it as their toilet. And no matter what they say, you can not just wash it through. The urine crystals stick and when they get warm in summer the smell is nausea inducing. I couldn't bring myself to sit on it knowing what the smell was. We tried every kind of artificial grass cleaning product going from the overly perfumed masking stuff to the full on old people's home urine destroyer. All worked for a few days but the smell soon returned. Using a full on rug doctor style machine was most effective but still limited.
There is some special volcanic rock sand stuff that you can put underneath that is supposed to absorb and destroy the crystals, but we would have had to pull the full lot up to place it underneath. And no idea if it would have worked or is just snake oil.

We've since moved house and now have fenced off the main lawn area to keep dogs off it and left them a strip at the side to use as their toilet. It's all yellow and destroyed already after 4 months, but I still have my precious area (that's mostly moss at the moment).

Per the above post, if the dog will use it as a toilet the installation materials are different:

1. install weed net
2. Lay 75- 100mm x 10-20mm compacted granite chippings as base layer
3. Lay second layer of weed net
4. Lay 50-75mm of granite dust
5. Cover with zeofill or similar
6. Lay grass and DO NOT use sand - use zeofill instead - I think it’s 6kg per m2

Doing this prevents the stink you can get from dog urine baking on sunny days. It’s also worth going for a shorter grass as it’s easier to keep clean - 20-25mm or so.

I put down a 4x4m lawn myself about 5 years ago. Laid it pretty much as per cheddarchallenged instructions above. Used sand not zeofil though, since no pets toileting on the lawn.

It doesn't really get much footfall and still looks great. It does have a trampoline on it which leaves indentations on it. But these seem to spring out within a couple of days of moving it.

Seem to recall it was about £250. Good quality, bought from local carpet shop. It's got about 4 or 5 slightly different colours in it (including a very small amount of brown to mimic dead/dying grass) and from 6 foot up, looking down, it's difficult to see it's artificial.

In summer it gets warm but certainly not too hot to walk or lie on. It's really very pleasant to lie on in the summer. I've fallen asleep on it on more than one occasion!

Our lawn looks like a battlefield albeit with colourful balls and random toys as opposed to discarded weapons and bits of dead people. I figure I have kids, it’s going to be messy, a bit like inside the house. I’ll wait until we plan on moving before doing anything. It looks shit but the birds still love it.

Kids destroy stuff just by being themselves. We weren’t allowed on the front garden as kids just so the lawn would look nice. Madness! Short version, just leave it and save some money.

Ours has been down a couple of years now and still looks like it did the day it was laid. We went for about the most expensive option and had someone in to do it as they cleared the ground, took out a hedgerow and some other bits we wanted doing.

Bloody brilliant, one of the best things we've had done. Lawn usable all year round, kids can play on it even straight after heavy rain, dogs don't churn it up, never needs cutting etc. Sure, if time permitted and finleybgoode was older and didn't churn the garden up with his mates I'd stick with a proper lawn but for a high traffic garden it makes sense and we are in the garden it far more than we would if it were real grass.

Yes it does get warm in the summer but not to the point it is unusable.

Vile, tacky, plastic tat. Hateful stuff, should be banned. Crap for the environment crap for wildlife

Vile, tacky, plastic tat. Hateful stuff, should be banned. Crap for the environment crap for wildlife

I have always thought this, but have just fitted some, and I now think that for the correct circumstances then it can work well.

3m x 4m side return at the back of the house was paved with good drainage, but very little sunlight. It is a dead end and was a forgotten space.
We wanted somewhere soft in the quite small garden for the kid to bounce around as the rest of it is nicely tiled decked or plant beds (as it was when we moved here). Real grass would take an age to grow, would involve removing a couple of tonnes of paving, rubble and Victorian builders waste through the house, and then retracing our steps with topsoil and seed/turf. Even if the grass did grow it would be a less usable space as it would quickly turn to mud through wear, having play equipment placed on it and lack of sunlight.

I bought some good 20mm foam underlay, the appropriate adhesive and good quality artificial grass and fitted it myself over a couple of days. It is now a great, all weather space that is soft, maintenance free and able to withstand the wear of tumbles and play equipment.

We did look at rubber matting to overlay on the paving but that was quite expensive and would not have the best finish on the sightly uneven paving. It would also look a little depressing.

Even though we used really good quality artificial grass, it still, and always will look like artificial grass, so best not to kid yourself that it is anything other than an outdoor carpet that looks a bit grassy.

Question for the OP : other than cutting your lawn, what other maintenance does it require? Then find out how much maintenance plastic grass will need!
Have you thought about buying a robot lawnmower? For a fraction of the cost of digging up your real grass, the robot mower will continually cut the grass, keeping it tidy and saving you almost any maintenance of your lawn.
Surely that has to be better than spending thousands of pounds covering the ground with yet more plastic?

I know the arguments against it, we moved to a run down house three years ago and have completely renovated from top to bottom, garden was massively overgrown both front and back, I’m no gardener ( it’s extra housework!) so have cut back everything, shifter a load of massive rocks. Honestly can’t be arsed anymore, just want to barbecue and drink beer now! As a penance I’m spreading wildflower seeds on the verges of the park opposite ( with agreement of community council)

As above, a robot mower will cut the grass whilst you bbq/drink beer.

As above, zeolite as your infill and it stays nice and cool. The stuff at our front entry where we can't grow grass, only mud/moss in the fall/spring, s ow in winter then dead grass in the summer is a heat trap. 30+ degrees in the summer when the sun's out.. a quick hose down at night and it cools the entire front of the house due to the slow evaporation from the zeolite and way less water than if we were trying to grow and maintain a real lawn in that spot.