Technical
including a good few ‘notables’. I look forward to being
convinced of this method’s merits and durability given the ‘notables’ who obviously are extremely pleased with its performance. I first came across a Soil Spray
Polymer type system about fifteen years ago and can remember being asked to go down to Bristol to look at a new revolutionary system being installed. I got as far as Reading on the M4 when a call came in to say “don’t bother, it’s all gone off in the pipe and barrel!” The UK weather got the better of that early version. In the recent past, we also had in the UK an infamous Aggregate Spray Lining System that promised the world, with guarantees, top track endorsements and fancy brochures. It wasn’t all it was meant to be with alleged poor application, failures, flaking and breaking out. My company did two bunkers for one course and vowed never to touch it again. I believe that most of the places
it was used at have replaced it by now and this has made me extremely sceptical about spray applied solutions, but the current ‘brand leaders’ have an excellent and growing portfolio and it may be that the changes to aggregate size, materials and application are enough to make this work. I look forward to seeing for myself.
And so to the ‘Engineered Solutions’
The Engineered Solutions can be split into three sub-categories - porous tarmacadam, porous concrete and porous rubber.
Tarmacadam Liners are a layer of hot laid open texture tarmacadam that is stable, semi flexible and extremely porous, so giving good drainage capabilities, with the surface texture able to ‘hold’ sand in place.
In the UK, it was developed at The Wisley by Topsport and has been in use and trialled for over five years. A search shows Matrix and Proline as being other variants.
Concrete Liners are, similarly, a layer of specially formulated open textured concrete, generally batch mixed on site, that is a little more than normal concrete. The two main players are
Capillary Concrete, which uses a special aggregate and cement mixture, and DAR Golf Construction from Ireland who offer SportBond bunker liner using, what appears to be, standard aggregates with a special admixture. Both use onsite mixing set ups. These look simple enough to install.
Rubber type linings systems tend to be a layer of wet poured rubber crumb or chip laid over an aggregate sub-base of varying
118 I PC OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016
depths. The benefit this has over the alternatives above is the impact resistance of the surface should sand levels become too thin.
The world leader is Blinder, but a few others have cropped up now to include Bunker Base, Bunker Bond and a pre-made mat type called Polylast.
Possibly the most expensive per square metre due to material costs, rubber isn’t cheap, but seen as the performance leader.
Geotextile and Sheet Liners
All variants of a geomembrane type material are mainly pinned down using soil staples and, being a textured material, will help ‘hold’ the sand and provide a durable barrier. The list includes SandMat,
BunkerMat, Sand Trapper, Sand Catcher, TrapTex, and a UK product called Hyline that is a self- weighted composite three layer material.
My knowledge of these in terms
of performance is fairly limited, to be honest, as I have tended to keep away from pinned materials due to concerns over ‘pin lift’ but, with any liner, slope angle, sand grading and shape will affect how well they work. I have, in the past, supplied and/or installed 250g/m2
thick
geotextile underlays, but these really have slope limitations and are durable barriers for flatter sand areas only.
Artificial Grass
Several clubs have, and are, using ‘recycled’ sand filled MUGA/Hockey type carpets to line bases similar to the membranes above, pinning slabs to cover the areas. Again, like natural turf, some are going pile up or back up, depending on personal views. For new carpet products in the
US, there is Bunker Solutions that use an enclosed white carpet, drainage base and edging system where the bunker drain pipe is set above the liner. In the UK, there are a couple of options. One from County Sports Surfaces has a short, dense pile product and a new material V-line from Verde Sports which uses a white porous 20mm pile carpet. With all carpet type systems, if
installed right, these can be fully jointed and glued for integrity. A good few years ago, we did
some early trials after a canny course manager said he was going to line his flinty bunkers with old hockey turf. We had two courses where this was installed to trial on bunkers for over two years and it did perform well enough, but the logistics, the fact that the material was really ‘end of life’, in bunker handling issues and getting a neat finish meant we did not pursue the ‘old turf’ option.
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