Interested in artificial grass for your home? Why wouldn’t you be – it is an amazing product that offers so much to homeowners. Yet, there tends to be one big hurdle that gets in the way for many homeowners: the price. Many people have concerns about the initial cost for installation, especially for large areas that require a greater amount of square footage. Are you interested in artificial grass for your home but looking for ways to reduce the cost of installation? We’re going to show you how to install artificial grass inexpensively, making modifications along the way to bring your project’s price tag down.
Buy Artificial Turf Wholesale
It may be tempting to simply hire a local landscaping company to deliver and install your new artificial lawn, but you may be unnecessarily overpaying if you do. Many independent or small local landscapers will increase the price – just like any retail store will do. In addition, you will be paying installation costs, which can increase sharply if they are assessed hourly. Depending on how many installers your landscapers brings with him or her, and how large your current yard is, the more fees you may incur. You can maximize your savings by choosing to buy wholesale artificial grass from a manufacturing and installation company that is accustomed to designing large landscapes.
Do It Yourself
Once you’ve obtained the turf from your wholesaler, you can begin installing it as a DIY project! By choosing to install it yourself, you can cut the cost in half, maybe even more. Simply purchase the turf direct from the U.S. Artificial Grass, along with the install accessories that you’ll need to go with it and tackle the project in a weekend. It may be time-consuming, but the money you save will make it well worth it. If you’re using your artificial turf for a smaller project (like a pet area, a play area for your child’s swingset, or to landscape your pool area, for instance), you will be able to quickly and efficiently add artificial turf to your lawn.
Low-Cost Sub-Base
Sub-base goes where your natural grass was once you’ve excavated down a few inches and before you install the grass. It’s primary job is to prevent the natural expansion and contraction of your yard’s native soil from affecting the turf, thus preventing wrinkles from popping up. In most cases, you can get good performance and longevity out of artificial grass with the use of only a small amount of decomposed granite. In fact, only the top few inches of subbase need to be decomposed granite in order to get good drainage and overall performance. This means you can fill most of your excavated area with inexpensive class II or CMB, then just spread a few inches of decomposed granite on the surface. This will bring down the cost considerably and produce fair results.
Reduce Material Waste
It’s virtually impossible that all the grass you use will be used up in your installation, unless your installation area is the exact shape and size of a roll of turf. Most likely, you’ll have to do some cutting and seaming together of multiple pieces, and some turf will be discarded. The trick here is to figure out how to make the most of a 13′ or 15′ wide roll of turf. One way to do that is to ignore grain direction. Artificial grass grain direction is one of the main culprits behind wasted grass. Grain direction is the direction in which the grass blades are predominantly pointing. Crews typically install artificial grass pieces so that the grain is facing the same direction, creating the most aesthetically-pleasing lawn. For irregularly-shaped installation sites, though, maintaining a consistent grain direction often means wasting a lot of grass. If perfect aesthetics aren’t terribly important to you, there’s a good chance you can save money by installing the pieces of grass you’ve purchased however they best fit the installation site, regardless of their grain direction.
Seaming Method Hack
As mentioned above, you’ll probably have to cut and seam together multiple pieces of turf when you install artificial grass. Most of the time, this is accomplished using seaming tape, seaming glue, and nails. This method is considered the most secure and reliable, but also the most expensive. While the cost of seaming tape and glue might be negligible for a small installation, it can become substantial for larger ones. The cheap alternative? Just use nails – a lot of them. This is a perfectly viable seaming method for some installations, though not quite as secure. Nails can and often do work loose over time and with enough foot traffic, so we only recommend this method if your grass isn’t going to get a lot of that. If you’ve got a large installation area that won’t see much foot traffic, a box or two of inexpensive 5-inch nails might just do it.
In Conclusion
Using these hacks will save you money so you can afford to install artificial grass on your property. It is not questionable and it is not surprising to know that the upfront cost of maintaining artificial grass is higher than when you choose to have a lawn that is made of real grass. But, in the long run, your investment will just come back to you as soon as you start to reap the benefits of installing artificial grass.