Reliant Stadium Turf - Ugh

Actually, its probably more expensive to keep on maintaining a natural grass field year after year, when you factor in mowing, sprinklers, replacement sections, painting, and the overall labor of installing and un-installing the field.

The whole "allure" of Reliant was to provide a natural football environment, with the convenience of a retractable roof... but its quite obvious that the stadium dimensions isn't letting in enough sun for the field to completely take root.

That being said, there are plenty of other NFL fields this time of the year that are in as bad, if not worse, shape than Reliant.... the foremost of them being in Pittsburgh, and we'll be seeing plenty of that god-awful turf if they do what they're supposed to do (win home games) in the playoffs.

 

Does Reliant use the turf that comes in trays?

 

yes, I think so.

 

I know one problem is that they over seeded with rye grass for the cool weather and rye grass does not come back like Bermuda grass will, Rye grass must germinate from seed and that takes time, looks like to me that the rye grass did not come in very strong and they are paying the penalty. If anyone plays golf down here in the south you know what I mean, Bermuda will hibernate during the cold months and come back in the spring. The reliant stadium Maint. Superintendent has to know all this and must of not prepared for this cold of winter.

 

The turf for the UTEP game may not be the same they use for the game tomorrow. Many times they will take the out the trays in the middle of the field and replace it with better turf for the Texans game. They grow it in on the trays in some part of the parking lot.

 

I don't believe they use bermuda or rye. I believe they use the same Paspalm that they use at Minute Made. It is an imported hybrid made to use in low light applications.

Yes it is in trays that can be patched or replace but it still sucks.

I was a Landscape Architect at one time and I was taught at Texas A&M that if grass doesn't get any light it won't grow. These goofy architects all the way back to Bucky Fuller and his glass Astrodome overestimate the amount of light that can penetrate into a high sided building. For football, in the winter , the sun angle gets so low it won't get down to the grass at all.

If I had done Reliant I would have put the whole field on a moveable track, cantilever supported the South end zone stands and made it where the entire field would have moved out into the sun on the south side. But no one asked.

Really the new artificial turfs with the ground up rubber 'soil' are better than grass but since they hyped Reliant as the 'state of the art' grass field they probably won't replace it.

 

Wow. You had some really really smart teachers at A & M.

 

After the bowl game, the Texans replaced the grass located between the hash marks. I guess it's quick fix for the Browns game.

Also. Nick is right on -- maintaining a grass surface is much more expensive than using an artificial one.

You (Swilkins) of all people (if you really are a "season ticket holder") should know that McNair is not cheap. Bud Adams was cheap..

 

Well they were aparently smarter than the architecture profs that didn't even teach their students how to look at at the sun angle charts in the front of the architectural standards text.

Really in these days of computer modeling it seems like this issue would have been obvious. Also the issue of the blinding light in the north end zone and the dark cavern in the south endzone.

Yea playing in the outdoors is beautiful! You just can't see or grow grass.

 

The Texans use a special variant of Bermuda known as TifSport. The Astros have been using Paspalum since the end of the second season.

http://www.turfmagazine.com/articles/realturf.html

Field Turf on trays exists, but won't be done in Reliant Stadium for two reasons:

(1) The Texans organization prefers natural grass.

(2) All of the available turf/tray systems would require extra clearance underneath. The rodeo has already said they would veto any such proposal.

 

I believe the new Arizona Cardinal convertible stadium is going to have the removeable field feature. The whole playing surface will exit the stadium so it can grow outside the stadium. Maybe the architects did learn something from Reliant Stadium.

 

According to Mark Vandameer on 610 Friday they did overseed and would need some improvements before Sunday, TifSport is new to me but I have dealt with Tifdrarf which is just a hybrid Bermuda grass you can cut down for golf and I am surf the Tifsport is a hybrid for the sports world of Football. Anyway, I hope they have a decent field for Sunday and the Texans can get a good win and end an 8-8 season.

 

The field does look terrible today.

It's tripping up the players who are slipping all over the place and tearing chunks of the grass up. Atleast it's the last game of the season.

 

I don't see any really good reason not to go with the new turf. We built a brand new stadium where I work, and got the most expensive turf available -- the same stuff they have on the NFL fields -- it's AMAZING!!! It looks great, but even better, it feels great. It's perfect, completely perfect. The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't make designs on the field, like you can on grass -- one of the maintenance guys would paint a logo on the field every week, and it would always be unique and look fantastic. Now it's the same all the time. But it's definitely worth that tradeoff.

 

yeah...time for artificial turf. turns out you can't grow grass indoors. i wish you could, because i would have saved a helluva lot of money on carpet.

 

Odd that the stuff at Minute Maid seems to work fine.

 

bigger hole in the roof. much more open than Reliant.