So you want fake grass for your property but don’t want to pay the installation costs up front? Today, we’ll teach you how to install fake grass on a budget, making adjustments along the route to reduce the cost of your installation. But make no mistake about it: To make this work, you’ll need to be willing to get your hands dirty, put in a significant amount of time and effort, and problem-solve along the way. Furthermore, while many of the solutions listed below will lower your cost, they will also increase the amount of labor you must perform yourself. Even if you have aid, you’ll be utilizing hand tools like a shovel and carrying up to 50 pounds on a regular basis. Is this the kind of challenge you’re looking for? Let’s get started!
Almost every installation has four components that can be changed to minimize the cost of installing cheap artificial grass without jeopardizing the product’s functionality or longevity. They are as follows:
- Material waste
- Subbase material
- Seaming system
- Tools utilized
1. The Unknown Fact About Low-Cost Subbase
After you’ve excavated a few inches and installed the grass, the subbase goes where your natural grass was. Its main purpose is to keep the natural expansion and contraction of your yard’s native soil from harming the lawn, resulting in wrinkles.
It’s one of three things in most professional installations:
- Crushed miscellaneous base (CMB),
- Class II road base, or
- Decomposed granite.
Because of its greater drainage and capacity to provide a continuously level surface, decomposed granite is regarded as the best of the three. Certain types of installations, such as putting greens, require a higher level of decomposed granite sub base to perform and last.
Is there a way around this?
In most circumstances, a small amount of decomposed granite can provide good performance and longevity for artificial grass. In reality, only the top few inches of the subbase should contain decomposed granite to achieve optimal water flow and performance. This means you can cover the majority of the excavated space with low-cost class II or CMB, then fill it with a few layers of decomposed granite. This will significantly reduce the cost while producing reasonable outcomes. Having said that, there are particular installations where we never recommend cutting back on decomposed granite subbase. If you get a lot of rain or already have drainage problems in your yard, this technique is unlikely to succeed.
2. Conserving resources by reducing waste generation
Unless your installation area is the precise form and size of a roll of turf, it’s nearly impossible to use up all of the grass you utilize in your installation. Most probably, you’ll have to cut and seam together several pieces of grass, and some grass will be thrown. The key is to determine how to get the maximum out of a 13′ or 15′ wide roll of turf. One method is to disregard grain orientation. Artificial grass grain orientation is one of the primary causes of discarded grass. The grain orientation is the major direction in which the grass blades point.
3. The Hack of the Seaming Technique
When installing artificial grass, as previously said, you will most likely have to cut and seam together various pieces of turf. The majority of the time, this is done with seaming tape, seaming glue, and nails. This approach is the most secure and trustworthy, but it is also the most pricey. While the expense of seaming tape and glue may be insignificant for a small installation, it can quickly add up for bigger ones.
What is the low-cost alternative? Simply use a lot of nails. This is a completely acceptable seaming procedure for some setups, although it is not as secure. We only advocate this strategy if your lawn isn’t going to have a lot of foot traffic. Nails can and will loosen over time and with enough foot activity. A box or two of affordable 5-inch nails would be enough if you have a vast installation area that won’t see much foot activity.
4. Cost-cutting Instruments
There are a plethora of possibilities when it comes to specialist instruments for putting artificial grass. Professional installers have a plethora of instruments at their disposal to speed up the process. But, we recommend that you dump the expensive equipment and go back to basics using hand tools. It turns out that almost everything that power tools can achieve can also be done with simple hand tools. Substitute a pick-ax for the sod cutter, a hand compactor for the plate compactor, a push broom for the power broom, and a carpet knife for the turf cutter. Just be prepared to work up a sweat and apply some major elbow grease!
