BusinessHABSynthetic Grass Installation Services: Once you’ve decided you want to start a small business.
Formulated your business plan, lined up financing, and secured a site.
The time will finally come to actually open up shop.
While planning a business may present challenges.
The actual act of opening a business.
And bringing the business concept to fruition has its own set of difficulties.
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To have a better chance of long-term success.
You need to get your business off to a good start.
Here are a few tips on how to legally establish your business.
Hire your first employees, spreading the word, and organizing a grand opening.
Installing a synthetic grass lawn and making it look good just requires following a few simple steps.
Following these steps will ensure a clean, professional looking installation.
All it takes is a little hard work and attention to detail.
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1. Get the business background
Consider Green Safety Artificial Grass Services for your home.
Business or other landscape project.
And imagine a lush green oasis of a realistic lawn without any irrigation.
Chemicals, equipment or time consuming maintenance.
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2. Ensure you have a business plan.
A business plan is critical to the success of a business.
And can be seen as a plan that describes your business.
Products/services, market, and describes how your business will go about expanding for the next three to five years.
It is essentially a “road map” for your business to follow going forward.
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3. Define your goals.
Do you want financial independence, eventually selling your business to the highest bidder?
Do you want something small and sustainable.
That you love doing and from which you want to derive a steady income?
These are the things that are good to know very early on.
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4. Create a working name.
You could even do this before you have an idea for the business.
And if the name is good, you may find it helps you define your business idea.
As your plan grows, and things begin to take shape, the perfect name may come to you.
Yut don’t let that hinder you in the early phases.
Create a name that you can use while you plan and don’t hesitate to change it later.
- Always check to see if the name is being used by somebody else before selecting it.
- Try to create a name that is simple and memorable.
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5. Things You’ll Need
- Sharp razor blades
- Saw
- Pick
- Shovels
- Wheelbarrow
- Hammer
- Power screw gun
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6. Secure start-up costs.
Most businesses require capital to start.
Money is typically required to purchase supplies and equipment.
As well as keep the business operational for the period before your business becomes profitable.
The first place to look for financing is yourself.
7. Come up with a pricing model.
Start by checking out your competitors.
Know how much are they selling a similar product for.
Can you add something to it (add value) to make yours different and hence make it a more enticing price?
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8. Build your product or develop your service.
Once you have the business all planned, financed, and have your basic level of staffing, get going.
Whether that’s sitting down with the engineers and getting the software coded and tested.
Or getting materials sourced and shipped to your fabrication room (aka “garage”).
Or purchasing in bulk and marking up the price.
The building process is the time during which you prepare for market.
During this time, you may discover things such as:
- Needing to tweak the ideas. Perhaps the product needs to be a different color, texture or size. Maybe your services need to be broader, narrower or more detailed. This is the time to attend to anything that crops up during your testing and development phases. You’ll know innately when something needs tweaking to make it better or to make it less like a competitor’s stale offerings.
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9. Remove the existing grass (or weeds, as the case may be).
You can use a sod cutter for this task.
A sod cutter can be rented from your local tool rental company or home good store.
The advantages of a sod cutter are: they cut evenly across the lawn.
They are much less destructive to existing water lines and irrigation.
And if you have grass you can roll it up and dispose of it which saves time.
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10. Excavate to an average depth of at least two inches.
While you can get away with less, you won’t get as good drainage.
Which can be especially important if your turf will be coming in contact with pets.
And their associated byproducts (ie. urine and feces).
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11. Install a bendaboard border along the perimeter of your installation, if desired.
The advantages to using bendaboard are that your turf will definitely not come up and cannot be pulled up by dogs.
Alternatively you can use 60d six inch nails every 4 inches (10.2 cm) on the perimeter.
- If you elect to use a bendaboard border, be sure to use a composite board material that will not corrode. Wood won’t suffice.
- Dig a slight trench along the border approximately six inches deep using a “mud gun” (layman’s term for a small jackhammer with a shovel bit – can be rented) or a trenching pick and trenching shovel.
- Put the bendaboard in the trench so the top of the bendaboard is approximately one inch to 3/4″ below the finished surface – for example, if the turf lawn has a cement slab next to it, the bendaboard border should be about one inch below the slab height.
- Stake the board to the ground so it is secure and backfill with gravel or the dirt that was excavated and compact thoroughly.
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12. Cap any existing irrigation heads.
Alternatively you can reconfigure them to “spritz” the turf and keep the irrigation system.
This works well for really hot days to cool the turf or for pet owners who want to wash the turf down automatically.
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13. Add gravel.
Quarter inch self compacting gravel is recommended.
Large gravel – half inch or above – will make getting a nice grade very difficult.
Add gravel so it comes about a quarter inch above the bendaboard and is higher in the middle.
If your area is a 20′ by 20′ square.
It’s best to make the middle of your install one inch higher than the edges.
This will create a nice “mound” look.
Flat synthetic turf installs have a tendency to look fake!
- One cubic yard of gravel will cover 300 square feet one inch thick. Also, one cubic yard will weigh about 2000lbs.
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14. Rake and compact.
Rake using a 36″ aluminum grading rake.
This rake has teeth on one side and the back has a flat grading blade.
Rake out the low spots as best as possible.
Using a vibrating plate compactor (another rented item).
Wet the area moderately with a hose and go over the area from outside in one time.
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15. Wet the area down again.
It should be pretty wet at this point.
Not flooded but as though it had rained heavily for about ten minutes.
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16. Go over it again with the plate compactor.
At the end you will have little lines from the edge of the plate compactor.
Work these out with the flat edge of your rake.
You will also have gravel shifting upwards at your edges.
Where the plate compactor pushed the gravel up by the bendaboard.
Remove this or your install will look fake.
You may need a fine broom to remove the excess from the lines and excess material on the edges.
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17. Add a weed mat.
Depending on your conditions, this may or may not be a benefit.
If you had a lot of paspalum, zoysia or bermuda grass.
It would be a good idea unless it was thoroughly killed.
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18. Add the synthetic turf.
There are a few things to know here.
The turf usually comes in 15 foot (4.6 m) widths and you always want to seam width wise.
It is much harder to seam lengths together.
- If your area is 20 feet (6.1 m) by 20 feet (6.1 m), for example, you will need one fifteen foot wide section that is twenty feet long, and a second section that is 5 feet (1.5 m) wide and twenty feet long. Unfortunately the remaining ten foot wide by twenty feet long section would be an unused remnant. Unroll the first section, laying it close to the edge and leaving a few inches to spare in front and back lengthwise. For example if your area is 20×20 cut a strip about 20’6″ long. Lay out your next section of 5′ wide and 20′ long.
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19. Make preliminary cuts.
Before cutting too close around the edges.
Cut out the excess factory material from the sides.
We cut the third stitch in.
Once you have cut stitches out you now know you have two straight edges.
That can be put together for your seam.
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20. Make your seam.
You have a few options. You can glue your seam or you can use staples or nails.
Using glue and professional seaming tape is recommended.
This gives a seam that is hard to detect and allows you to not have nails in the field.
This is important for playgrounds as well as the stretching process.
- To do the seam get the two turf pieces next to each other, emulating the distance between them which duplicates the stitching in the turf. What this means is if the stitches are 3/8″ apart, you should pull the two turf pieces together until the stitches are 3/8″ apart. If you are too close you will have a “mohawk” effect in which too many blades are competing for space. If you are too far it will look empty. Too far is better than too close though.
- Once you get your spacing right and the seam looks good, put some nails about 18″ away from your seam. Just a few nails partially in every few feet will do. The nails are just to keep your turf from shifting at all.
- Now pull back each piece of turf leaving a couple feet of gravel exposed. Lay out your seaming tape (the tape should be 12″ wide). Spread your glue over your seaming tape and trowel out so it covers the tape evenly but thinly.
- Let sit for about ten minutes to get tacky. Put the turf back down over the seaming tape, being careful not to let the blades get stuck in the glue. Put bags of sand or similar over the entire seam to make sure it doesn’t shift.
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21. Remove the bags or sand or similar, once your seam is cured (which may be the next day).
You are now ready to stretch the turf.
For most installs, you can stretch lengthwise only and don’t need to stretch width wise.
If the area is under 400sqft, you can get away with stretching from one side only.
- To do this, pull the turf so it lines up well with the bottom or top of your install then fasten the turf to your bendaboard or nail the turf down using your six inch nails.
- Using your feet, kick out the turf from the nailed side, trying to get out any wrinkles.
- Put six inch nails halfway in every 3 feet (0.9 m) out and 5 feet (1.5 m) wide so you don’t lose your stretch.
- Keep stretching and nailing until you get to the other side.
- Once you get to the other side you can make your final cuts by the edge or bendaboard and use your screws or nails to fasten the turf.
- You can make your final cuts and fasten the sides at this time as well.
- Once you have nailed or screwed down the perimeter you can remove all the nails in the field.
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22. Infill.
Your last step is applying the infill. Infill helps keep your blades upright.
Gives the turf a more realistic look and helps keep your turf cool.
For infill choices you have silica sand (cleaned beach sand, basically).
Durafill (acrylic coated sand, usually green in color).
Crumb rubber (provides some fall rating but some have reported it can be a bit toxic).
And deodorizing infills for pets (a good example is Zeofill).
For most purposes sand is fine.
If you have a lot of dogs we recommend a product like Zeofill to reduce odors).
- To apply the infill, use a power-broom (or a lot of power and a heavy duty push-broom) and make the blades stand upright.
- Then use a drop spreader or carefully use a flat shovel and apply the infill to the turf at a rate of 1.5 lbs/sqft.
- After applying brush again until the sand or other infill is evenly distributed.
- If your turf has a dusty look at this point just hose it down and you are done!
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