Looking to laydown about 1,200 square feet in West Houston.

****Meant to say ARTIFICIAL TURF****

Thought you meant sod…

Marvin_Zindler said:

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Looking to laydown about 1,200 square feet in West Houston.

****Meant to say ARTIFICIAL TURF****

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retail is $2.50-$4 for turf material, then probably half as much again for infill and tape/glue/nails. Labor will vary, however it's an easy process to diy or hire labor, but large pieces are heavy and difficult to maneuver if alone. You also will have 1500 lbs of infill you'll have to move (in 50lb bags)

If you can get it wholesale, it drops a good 20-30%.

I was able to score wholesale by telling the vendor I was using a landscaper for install, and then after picking our selection, they came back and said they were unexpectedly out, so offered another 15% off and free delivery if I made another selection.

Retail was $3.60, wholesale was $2.75 and I got it for $2.35.

And then my landscaper installed it for next to nothing… well, truth be told, literally nothing.


I had right at 1200sf (after accounting for waste, was 1000 as measured.)
I got it down all in for under $4k, but that's really low considering my discounts.
It took 3 guys 2 days but I have a pretty intricate layout with multiple levels. A larger open area will be a one day job.
I got the hero fill infill. https://shop.purchasegreen.com/install-accessories/artificial-grass-infill-herofill/

I got a quote at nearly $15k for a product with similar specs.

Check out https://www.purchasegreen.com

They have locations all over.

I can answer any questions you may have. I drew it up myself and calculated all the pieces I needed and the layout/seams. purchase green offered a few free cuts so you don't have one huge roll.

Also, you need grey breeze or equivalent underneath it, 2-4" or so. If diy-ing, that can be purchased by the ton. I needed about 8-10tons at $25ish /T.

Marvin_Zindler said:

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Looking to laydown about 1,200 square feet in West Houston.

****Meant to say ARTIFICIAL TURF****

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Around $12-$14/SF including labor and materials to install it. This also includes subgrade prep. Turn-key pricing.

It helps that you're in construction as a career

I'd be interested to see what a DIY job looks like. Watched them install ours over the course of 2-3 days and it was a **** ton of prep work

barnacle bob said:

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Thought you meant sod…

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Lol...sorry about that. My bad.

Looked into it recently. As noted above, if you want quality turf and a quality install, $11-14/sq ft.

Corps_Ag12 said:

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It helps that you're in construction as a career

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Yes it does, but I've paid the going rate for labor for landscapers, and currently it's $40/hr.

So I had 3 guys 2 days, that's ~$2k for labor that I would have paid if I didn't get the hookup.

So even if I paid retail for materials, I would have been at $4300 for turf, another ~$2k for infill/nails, $500 for grey breeze, I'm still at <$9k, vs the $15k quote.

Interestingly enough, the same company that gave me the $15k turnkey quote also gave me a materials only quote for DIY, and it was about $7k.. so they literally were letting me know they had $8k worth of labor and profit/OH in their number, which turned me away (They told me they'd have it done in one day). That's when I decided to look on my own and try and get wholesale+affordable labor.

Now, with DIY you may forgo a warranty, and maybe the seams aren't meticulously perfect; but the guys I used had done turf before, so they knew what they were doing. We have one seam that goes across a large area (it's 20x20 or so, and these turf rolls are max 15'). You can see it if you're looking for it, but it doesn't just stand out. Maybe it would 100% disappear if I hired a company.. but that's several thousands of dollars to get that.
Of the other 3 seams, 2 are only ~3' long and they blend great, the other is ~5' and it blends as well.

You can slightly see the seam coming off the corner of the concrete pad going to the right.
There's another one on the upper layer at top left, at the top of those stairs that doesn't really show.
And another one in between those stairs and the box on far left that doesn't show as well.

Nifty and clever setup. Gig Em

Looks pretty good, how long has it been installed?

The 50% labor/oh + profits doesn't kill me but I understand wanting to save it. There is a lot of labor involved, especially if you have to clear existing grass etc + lay and level rocks+gravel

terradactylexpress said:

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Looks pretty good, how long has it been installed?

The 50% labor/oh + profits doesn't kill me but I understand wanting to save it. There is a lot of labor involved, especially if you have to clear existing grass etc + lay and level rocks+gravel

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yeh this was part of a huge backyard renovation/complete redo. I had an excavator back there take nearly 80-90 cy of dirt out so I had them pull all the existing grass out as well.

I rented a dumpy trailer to get the ~10tons of grey breeze in bulk from a place near me, and while I trucked a handful of loads back there, I did end up paying landscapers to do the rest when they did my landscaping and installed the block borders (this was summer of 2024, and a different company than who did the turf).
We had the backyard basically complete for winter, except it was grey breeze everywhere you see turf.

All to say, doing all this prep work not under the umbrella of a contractor certainly saved some money. It's not technically challenging work, it's all brut force labor.


Then in Feb this year, I had the turf done.

Don't get me wrong, it IS a ton of labor, and depending on your roll sizes, could even be difficult for pros to get it done.

My large piece was a 40' cut, so it was probably 600 lbs. They rolled it out in the driveway to make their initial rough cuts to fit that one large piece in place, which got it down to easily half that weight, which was then manageable to carry back there.

But my other pieces were a few 7's, a few 5' and I think a 20'.

I also spent several hours all told figuring out which way I wanted it to lie, where to put seams, and what sizes I'd need to match my layout. So if there were any mistakes, it would have been on me. Needless to say, I double and triple checked it several times before committing to my cuts with the turf supplier.

Yes you can get it installed for $9.00 to $11.00 a sf just depending on how many sf and look you want. That is base and everything. I can get you a guys number.

We have turf and it's great. Just know it's HOT on bare feet in the summer if you have kids. Also, if you have dogs, you will need to treat their pees areas or it'll smell like a homeless alley (depending on number and size of dogs. Maybe consider keeping a large patch of real grass, idk. We have two Great Danes. Keeps the dogs clean, keeps the house cleaner. We had about 1245 sqft and cost about $14,500. This was 2021.

What brand is your swim spa? What size?

KDubAg said:

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We have turf and it's great. Just know it's HOT on bare feet in the summer if you have kids. Also, if you have dogs, you will need to treat their pees areas or it'll smell like a homeless alley (depending on number and size of dogs. Maybe consider keeping a large patch of real grass, idk. We have two Great Danes. Keeps the dogs clean, keeps the house cleaner. We had about 1245 sqft and cost about $14,500. This was 2021.

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on your first point, we heard people say to keep some irrigation if you can, so we did, we kept 3 perimeter rotary heads, so I can turn it on (smart controller ftw) and get it wet to cool off.

On your second point, maybe many people just don't think of this, but you can easily train a dog where to go in your yard.

Our dogs poop in one area on side of yard, and they pee in the mulch. They're about 90-95% accurate I'd say.. I get just an occasional poop in the middle of yard, and I've only seen each of them pee on the turf maybe twice.

I stopped letting our neighbor dog come over and romp in the backyard cause it never failed, as soon as I let her back there, she'd pee and poop right in the middle of the yard. I didn't let it go on too long, now if they want to romp I bring mine over there!

Corps_Ag12 said:

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What brand is your swim spa? What size?

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https://www.platinum-spas.com/us/product/helios-swim-spa/

About 20' long, and they're all the same 88-90" width. The swim side water is ~50" deep.
Swim side is ~12x6, hot tub is ~6x6. With my arms stretched out, I'm about an inch shy of touching both walls.

We got it a home/garden show.. figured they were just being the salesmen that they are when they said they only have a few left and letting them go cheap. I luckily had priced a similar model about 3 years prior, so had a reference point. So we ended up purchasing it there at the event.

Sure enough, we end up in the showroom of our seller in the following months, and they had our model on the floor priced at 50%+ higher than what we paid. So getting them at a show is seemingly a good buy.

I was priced $8, $14, and $20 per sq ft just 3 weeks ago. That was for a 20x25 spot. A good, better, best pricing from one contractor.

If you use Premier Green infill that smell problem will not be an issue. It is naturally hydrophobic & antimicrobal.

https://premiergreengc.com/

We have something that's similar, could be the same, don't know off the top of my head but it's a green infill that has the same characteristics.

I just don't think it really can handle two grown Danes that pee just as much as a human 5+ times a day. lol.

Somebody else mentioned about training the dogs, I would do it but wife and kids are too lazy and won't be consistent. I should try though.

Also we have irrigation underneath the turf from a previous install that we left in place to help cool it off.

KDubAg said:

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Somebody else mentioned about training the dogs, I would do it but wife and kids are too lazy and won't be consistent. I should try though.

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Start with just bringing them out there on a leash so you can control where they go. Once they go, do whatever you do.. treat, clicker, whatever. Use a word to describe that area for them so they'll learn it. In our case, it was 'rocks' since it was pea gravel.

It won't take long before you can let them out off leash but walk with them and direct them towards their 'rocks'. If they generally do all of their business in the morning, then after they're done with walk (or in your desired spot while on leash), then they can be free and run around the yard.

But of course the key is, until it's done, you can't just let them out unsupervised. Tell lazy mom to take them on leash or just don't let them out and let you do it.

My wife was very much a part of it when we were training, chase she got home well before me and dog was crated, so she knew to get the leash and let him go. We got a second dog and did it with him too, though he was a little more disobedient for a while.

Oddly enough for me, their 'rock' area on side of house where they used to pee and poop is now turf, and while my dogs still poop in that area, they kinda just started peeing on their own in the mulch on bushes. Every once in a while my big dog will pee in the poop area, but usually on the fence, so it's just kinda coming down on the edge of turf. But most of the time, they both run out to a mulch spot and lift onto a bush or the fence.

I guess they don't really like to pee on the turf, they must know it's different than grass.

I have a sign up on the fence in front of their poop area that says as much and has a cartoonish picture of a dog pooping.
I had a worker in my backyard once, and he noticed the 2-3 piles of poop right there and he asked how I get my dogs to do that, I told him I just put up the sign so they knew where to go.

I swear I think he believed me!