Blocked Pores - a mid-life crisis?
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Is yours clogged up? Is its performance lacklustre? Do you wish it was as good as it used to be? Dr Colin Mumford explains how a visit from a specialist can give your artificial pitch a new lease of life, help it achieve the performance you used to have, and make it last longer
ow that I’m fast approaching the halfway point of middle age, I know full well that if you don’t give your body some sort of half decent
maintenance routine it all starts to go a bit out of shape, and looks nothing like it did ten years ago. Plus the performance characteristics are somewhat distant from the high performance statistics that could be boasted ten years earlier; sub four minute miles can now only be accomplished by car; the gazelle like speed and agility has been replaced with that of a sloth, and the only burpees (known as ‘squat thrusts’ to gentlemen of a certain age) achieved are the variety that comes from drinking too fast or, more usually, after a few gulps of a favourite fizzy drink. Artificial playing surfaces suffer the same embarrassing scraggly appearance and loss of performance as they age, that is, if they have not had a reasonable maintenance regime carried out on them. Even when maintenance regimes are adhered to, things can still sag, wobble and get clogged up, to the point where intervention by a specialist is necessary to achieve the surface required.
A common problem with older, sand filled artificial surfaces is the build-up
of contamination within the sand infill itself, which chokes the sand by filling up and obstructing the pore spaces and pathways that are needed for effective infiltration of surface water through the infill and into the drainage system. The contamination can include, amongst others, leaf litter from surrounding trees and shrubs, soil and stones that have been walked on to the surface, moss and algal growth, guano (bird poo), chewing gum and even flaky skin cells and hair. Routine and regular maintenance will slow down the rate at which the contamination builds up and, if the ideal maintenance regime is carried out from day one, the almost elimination of any infill remediation at a later date.
Infill remediation
In a nutshell, this is the removal of old contaminated infill, and the introduction of new clean infill. Usually this takes place on surfaces that are between five and eight years old, although the time interval depends on the quality and quantity of the maintenance that has been carried out. Interestingly, I’m not often asked “how can you tell the sand infill needs replacing?” It’s a good question and one that should always be asked, as more questions and scrutiny help
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