Sand School Refurbishment !!! ???

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cona.g

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Hi,

Me and a friend went to view a yard for rent last night, the yard is lovely but the sand school has been left for sometime and is now covered with a layer of grass. Does anyone having an experience redoing a school it seemed to have a nice amount of sand still under it, just a case of getting the garden on top of it off. all help would be appreciated. prices/labor/time etc

Thanks
 
Ooh exciting for you :)
Getting rid of the grass isnt a problem you can spray it with weedkiller and it will die off but what you need to check is what base does it have as sometimes the grass roots can damage the base underneath the sand.
The depth the sand needs to be again relies upon the base and what you plan to do on the surface. In a good sand the hooves shouldnt penetrate more than a few inches but so many sands arent.

Time wise to spray the sand doesnt take long at all but you have to resist raking the dying grass out as the weedkiller has to get down to the roots to kill it which sometimes takes weeks. If you leave it long enough it will rot away but you probably wouldnt want to do that as it could potentially block the drainage and also the more debris you have in the sand the more likely weeds are to keep growing. During summer I have to spray my menage probably once a month to keep the weeds down.

When you say refurb do you mean just sort the sand out or put a topping on?

If you were thinking of taking the sand up, on a rented yard I wouldnt bother, I did this to my school about 6 years ago and it cost £6000 and that was just with a sand only surface (I have since topped it with rubber)
 
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yes exciting !
Well it was dark last night only had a torch but i got a good idea. basically it looked like a lawn and there was about an inch of mud/grass-topping on top of the sand but there seemed to be a lot of sand underneath it would not be a problem to top it up after if needed. im just not sure spraying would do the trick as it would kill the grass but what about all the dead grass and mud afterwards ? would it need to be harrowed off the top of the sand ?
 
You would really need to scrape that top layer off. I have never heard of that before it must have been left for a long time.
If you could get a mini digger and scrape the top layer off then like you say if necessary top it up with something. You could do it by hand but that would be back breaking. If you can help it try not to disturb the sand underneath as the sand settles over years and then requires less ongoing maintenance to keep it nice so if you can scrape off the top that would be ideal.
4" of sand is plenty if your topping.

I dont think harrows would work, you ideally dont want to mix the top Yuk layer with the sand.
 
We just had our corners done in our sand school.......got a bit lazy and haven't dug them in and all four corners were covered in grass, especially where we store the jumps. My dad has a JCB on site and literally just scraped the top off then tipped in into the next field where we spread it about a bit.
 
Many moons ago my then employer rented a yard that had a school as you describe. JCB to remove the top layer of mud/grass/sand. Top up with rubber.
It was fine but the drainage wasn't great and you did get a bit of weed regrowth that was pulled by hand periodically.

If you owned it you'd be better to scrape off entire surface, check drainage and membranes and redo properly.
 
Thanks for your help. so i think the best thing to-do would be to get the top scrapped off then see what its like underneath, maybe spray it to kill any left over roots.I think it will be a nice surface underneath. it just seems to good not to go for just because the school needs work. it even has floodlights...

thanks for your help
 
Where you need to be carefull is that you don't spend a lot of good money on old. You may well be better removing the whole lot and starting again especially if the mebrane and the drainage have failed or were never installed correctly. If you remove the top and repolace it with new you may find that it does not drain properly and also does not ride well.
 
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