Sports Drainage

SGC Group is a member of the LDCA (Land Drainage Contractors Association), and we follow their guidelines and industry best practice when considering our customers sports drainage requirements.

Our experienced team can assess, design and install a tailored drainage system to suit our customer’s requirements, ground conditions and budget, or follow specifications that have been set-out by an appointed architect.

Full drainage systems can be installed with minimall disruption in closed seasons and still give sufficient growing time for the surface to be ready for the start of a new season.

Installing sports drainage is a great investment for any sports facility. A poor draining pitch will at best suffer from excessive wear and damage over the playing season, which can be costly to repair. In most cases a pitch can be out of action for the majority of the season, causing fixture cancellations and a build-up of fixtures at the end of a season. This then causesadditional stress to the playing surface as there is too little time for the pitch to recover between fixtures. Postponed and cancelled fixtures can also adversely affect the income generated for the owners or managers of a facility.

Most complete drainage systems consist of two parts:

1- Primary Drainage

Primary drainage consists of installing perforated piped lateral drains that are neatly cut at between 5 and 10 meter centres, to suit ground conditions, using our specialist trenching equipment. These are then backfilled with free draining gravel and drainage sand to the surface.

SGC Group has invested in the latest Shelton 760+ Supertrencher and a 6t Shelton Gravel and Sand Hopper to maximise the efficiency of this process, and we also have an ATF 45 trencher for completing smaller projects.

2 – Secondary Drainage

Secondary drainage is installed to transfer water from the surface into the primary system. These usually take the form of sand or gravel bands that are installed at 90 degrees to the primary drains and are between 1m and 0.5m centres. 

SGC Groups Koro Top Drain is a fantastic development in secondary/surface drainage technology. It rapidly excavates three surface drainage trenches simultaneously, 40mm wide by 200mm deep at 500mm spacings, and injects them with sand. The sand is propelled into the trenches to ensure that there is no settlement and the rear tyres firm the sand to create a consistent playing surface. The spoil from the trench is removed by a conveyer system into a trailer or dumper.  After drag-matting to level the finished surface, the trenches will heal rapidly creating a much improved playing surface.

A further benefit is that the removed spoil can be mixed with sand and used as topdressing soil elsewhere.

Thanks to rapid surface water drainage, a stable and healthy top layer is created which encourages strong grass rooting within a balanced soil that retains nutrients and water.  As the matrix diagram below shows, the Koro Top Drain provides the perfect link into a primary/piped drainage system, but it can also be used successfully to assist with surface water drainage on certain pitches that don’t have a primary drainage system.
 

How it works

1. The blades rotate, to excavate the trench
2. Spoil is cleanly removed via the guide channel
3. Conveyor moves spoil off into trailer
4. Sand is injected into trench, before being firmed by the rear wheels