Another tee pad thread.

[Doofenshmirtz]

Diavolo had some stuff similar to this. I did not particularly care for it. You will still have issues with the spot where most people plant losing fill material and pitting out and when you lose the fill in a spot it will then get to be a hazard from not allowing any rotation of the foot.

I was hoping to install flush with surrounding area, fill with topsoil and plant grass, probably bermuda. Do you think the grass with keep the fill soil from being lost at the foot plant area?

 

[BogeyNoMore]

I've found an interesting product called HexPave that might be described as a sort of hybrid, natural/plastic tee pad. It is a hex grid that you can fill with gravel, sand or topsoil and just let the grass grow through, water will soak through but should prevent the ground from getting worn. You can also just mow over it. It has a feature for traction. Has anyone had any exprience with this type of pad?

I'm probably going to install one pad with this material to try it out. The price is decent at about $140 per pad with free shipping if the order is $1000 or more. The size of one unit will make a 5-1/2' x 11-2/3' pad with one square left over.

It's been a few years since I played it, but Ashe County had something similar on tees up in the hills that would have been a lot more work to pour concrete for. I don't recall having issues with these grid type tees.

You could scan the cons sections of 5-10 reviews to see if anyone mentioned them as a negative.

Hole #17 White Tee

www.dgcoursereview.com

 

[biscoe]

I was hoping to install flush with surrounding area, fill with topsoil and plant grass, probably bermuda. Do you think the grass with keep the fill soil from being lost at the foot plant area?

I don't think the grass will survive in that area if the course gets any regular play.

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

I don't think the grass will survive in that area if the course gets any regular play.

Well, you miight be right but I am probably going to try to prove you wrong. I just need to see how hard it will be to install so that the fill is high enough above the soil surface to allow grass to grow free of trampling and yet still not interfere with a run-up. It may prove impossible, but my options on this course are limited.

 

[ru4por]

Diavolo had some stuff similar to this. I did not particularly care for it. You will still have issues with the spot where most people plant losing fill material and pitting out and when you lose the fill in a spot it will then get to be a hazard from not allowing any rotation of the foot.

This has been my experience as well. It seems keeping them level is a challenge and when not completely filled they are sole grabbers.

 

[Sewer bill]

This has been my experience as well. It seems keeping them level is a challenge and when not completely filled they are sole grabbers.

Is it weird I find this desirable in a teepad? I'd rather throw in grass with cleats than play off slick cement pads. I'm still hoping someone tries out some kind of steel mesh or expanded metal over cr6 or another low flow backfill.

 

[BillFleming]

Well, you miight be right but I am probably going to try to prove you wrong. I just need to see how hard it will be to install so that the fill is high enough above the soil surface to allow grass to grow free of trampling and yet still not interfere with a run-up. It may prove impossible, but my options on this course are limited.

Create a 'temporary' email address....install the tee pad on one hole and have a sign stating this is a test tee pad, email comments, pro or con, to the email address you set up for it. Yeah, you'll probably get lots of spam, but it's worth a try and it won't be your personal email. Then check on it frequently and see how it is holding up and how people are using that tee area (do they use the tee pad or do they throw from beside it). Or instead of an email address, set up an online survey they can respond to. Depending on how heavily it is used, you might have usable results in 3 ro 4 months.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

^ That's actually a pretty good idea to obtain player feedback on all aspects of course design/install.

A possible caveat D-shmirtz might have is, could be cost inefficient to purchase just enough of that grid from vodaland to do only 1-2 tees to test it out.

Just thinking out loud.

 

[Sewer bill]

^ That's actually a pretty good idea to obtain player feedback on all aspects of course design/install.

A possible caveat D-shmirtz might have is, could be cost inefficient to purchase just enough of that grid from vodaland to do only 1-2 tees to test it out.

Just thinking out loud.

If he has an llc with a separate physical address and not just a po box you can get an rfq from most of the distributors for small volume. It's still ridiculously expensive stuff considering they make it from predominantly literal non ferrous trash falling off scrap conveyers at smith recycling facilities in the northeast, it's a blend of mostly hdpe and whatever else passes through the tumblers on the 3rd stage just before it ends up in a landfill as backfill. Last realistic quote I got for a similar product was 2900 for 100 feet 4 feet wide and it had a 2 month lead time for less than 5000 feet. They wanted to ship it uninsured as roll not on a pallet so I backed out as the insurance was an additional 600 and I don't trust freight on non pallet in my area.

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

So I ordered one package of HexPave "tiles" and, before I got a chance to install it, a local disc golfer called me with an offer to deliver to the course some court surface tiles (Product Page) that he was removing from a local home. It ended up being 1500 square feet of tiles that were used as an outdoor basketball court surface. The tiles are 1/2" or so thick and snap together fairly easily. Another disc golfer and I went out to the course to set up a few tees to try out and managed to set up 7 tees in about two hours. We did little more than smooth over the underlying surface. When you walk on the tiles, you can feel the unevenness due to our lack of site prep, but no-one notices any issue when they are throwing other than a little shifting of the tee pad (that I will be remedying with some spikes to anchor the pads in place. Here are some pics of the installed pads. This surface has good traction wet or dry. It was raining when we put them in and traction was not an issue for throws.







When I get some time, we will be going back in and doing a better job of site prep. We also discovered that they can be leveled by applying sand through the tiles. You can see the sandy spots in the images. The pads are easily relocated by just one person.

 

[biscoe]

Very interesting. Keep up the reports!

 

[glassila]

Very interesting indeed!
Does anyone happen to know the square foot cost on this material?

 

[biscoe]

Very interesting indeed!
Does anyone happen to know the square foot cost on this material?

working on it- have messaged the company- waiting to hear back.

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

Does anyone happen to know the square foot cost on this material?

I got it free of course, but I did research this type of product a little when I first got the call about them.
DunkStar makes a product that looks very similar at a cost of about $3.00 per square ft.

In trying to budget what we got in order to have enough extra tiles to put tee pads on some of the red and gold tees in more problematic areas, I have experimented with 4x12, 4x11 and even 4x9 on a shorter hole. None of the local players seem to have any issue with the 4 ft. width and an additional benefit we noticed was that it is much easier to start your run-up off the tee pad because it is only about 1/2 inch thick (it might be 5/8", I didn't measure). You'd have to drag your foot to catch the edge or notice the step up. Also, pushing a 6" galvanized 60D nail (pole barn nail) directly through a tile at the corners of the pad seems to do a pretty good job of anchoring it.

So $150 per tee pad looks possible. Maybe less if purchased in bulk. The DunkStar product is available as different color tiles that I had also thought about using to denote different groups of tees (e.g., gold tiles for gold tees).

 

[biscoe]

oops

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

Update on new pads: The feedback that I have gotten on these pads has been almost universally positive, almost. One MPO player claims that they are too grippy and don't allow him to rotate his plant foot. I don't want to dismiss this negative feedback, but I am considerably heavier than him and I have zero issues with the amount of grip. Like concrete, the grip is just something that I don't notice at all. Most that I have asked had a similar experience. It might be his shoes?

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

Another Update. I'm only really paying attention to the complaints. The MPO player above mentioned that they are too grippy. The only UDisc reviewer to have mentioned them thinks that they are too slippery. So, after about a 1-1/2 months, those are the only negative comments that I have received. They are clearly better than natural pads and only have a 1/2" step up. After a few rains they have settled in pretty well. All of the white tees now have pads installed. They are all anchored with galvanized, artificial turf nails which seem to be holding up well.

 

[John Smith1]

Test

 

[John Smith1]

Test

 

[ru4por]

Test

Loud and clear, good buddy. Over and out.