Football Pitch Drainage
Proper drainage design is absolutely critical to building a football pitch. Hydraway supplies the equipment and expertise to get the job done right.
What Is an Effective Football Pitch Drainage System?
As one of the largest fields in professional and amateur sports, the football pitch has unique maintenance requirements. It’s not that the grass of a natural turf football pitch is inherently different than other fields, but the size of the field combined with the constant battering by 22 players running across the surface means a football pitch receives more punishment than a normal athletic field.
There are a number of ways to prevent damage but eliminating standing water and mitigating the powerful effects of erosion are two key goals. Drainage systems have taken many forms over the years and, slowly but surely, have culminated in the most effective drainage solution on the market today.
There are two fundamental problems water can cause that affect natural and synthetic turf fields alike.
Excess Water Buildup
When water builds up, either on the surface of a field or underneath, both the state of play and the physical state of the field can degrade. When players are running across a dry, healthy field, normal care procedures can mitigate the damaging effects of players’ cleats. However, throw a bit of excess water on the field and suddenly grass is turned to mud. Needless to say, this will result in player injury.
Water underneath the surface that’s trapped—next to ineffective drainage, for example—can repeatedly freeze and unfreeze in the winter and degrade the structural integrity of the football pitch itself. An unlevel playing field, the inevitable result of subsurface water buildup, can be incredibly expensive to fix.
Soil Erosion
If standing water is not dealt with quickly or if the water is allowed to drain from the field outside of normal channels, soil erosion is a virtual guarantee. Even more significant than the effects of a freeze and thaw cycle, erosion can slowly or suddenly result in damage to a field. Even if the surface grass stays relatively healthy, an unlevel surface can result.
The moral of the story is that field structure problems are incredibly disruptive and expensive. Bad drainage can result in bad outcomes like damage to a field, much worse outcomes like a player getting hurt, or both.
Comprehensive Pitch Drainage Solutions
What separates the drainage systems Hydraway supplies from all of the other solutions on the market today? With a superior water inflow rate and unmatched clog resistance, Hydraway technology is the perfect choice for the modern football pitch.
Hydraway’s superior inflow rate means that more water can enter the system and be flushed away along desired channels. Because water can enter the Hydraway system through more than 70 percent of its surface area, the likelihood of subsurface standing water is dramatically reduced. With perforated pipe systems, water often has a chance to build up alongside the drainage system, causing erosion and other negative effects cited above. Hydraway doesn’t suffer from similar issues.
Even with a higher inflow rate, Hydraway systems are incredibly clog-resistant. The needle-punctured fabric exterior lets water in, unimpeded, while dirt has no entry point. Over time, drainage systems that become clogged are essentially as good as not having a drainage system at all, necessitating expensive repairs.
A Leading Sports Ground Drainage Provider
Hydraway systems are installed on amateur and professional sports fields around the world. Through our worldwide network of distributors, we make delivery to the project site incredibly simple and cost effective.
Another benefit of Hydraway? The system, shipped in coils of custom length up to 2,250 feet, demonstrates zero coil memory when unrolled. In other words, installation is far less labor intensive than with traditional perforated pipe drainage systems.
We will come out to the job site to offer expert consultation services for whatever your project entails. Need to design a drainage system that works for six football pitches in a massive recreational complex? We can handle that. Our engineers and drainage experts are at the forefront of the industry and can deliver a solution fit for any field.