Case Studies

Immediately outside the kennels is a fenced, grassy slope that comes down to the concrete path beside the kennels. The grassy slope is flint bound, and so cut paw pads was a constant problem when the dogs came out and had a run around.

The slope also used to become waterlogged in the winter, as there was no ultimate drainage due to the low wall splitting the grass and the concrete path.

Four years ago we donated, and laid a series of our honeycomb grass mats M52L to cover the entire grass area. This worked very well at first and the grass growth proved phenomenal considering the destructive force of an accelerating greyhound’s claws.

However, the winter of 2015/16 proved so wet that the collected water under the mats turned the soil into quicksand and the mats sank. We hoped that even then, when the grass started to grow in the spring of 2016, the problem would solve itself. Of course, it didn’t happen for the sunk mats, apart from keeping the soft mud level, were less than useless.

The company donated a pallet of new honeycomb mats and our wonderful staff volunteered to donate their weekend to cure the problem for the kennels. The first task was to lift the lower section of the existing heavy, mud logged mats – using the new Fieldguard Gripper for the first time. It was a baptism of fire, for the mats were both slippery, muddy and exceedingly heavy. The Gripper performed splendidly, once we’d worked out that it needed dunking in a bucket of water between each lift to remove the sticky, slimy mud.

They then dug a trench and laid a French drain between the bottom of the slope and the low wall, levelled it with earth, laid ground stabilisation mesh M9 and dropped the new honeycomb mats on top. The whole pinned down with the metal U pins (M9P).

It was then re-seeded and, notwithstanding the dogs still using it all as their private race track, you can well see the results starting to emerge after just a month of growth.

The kennels are also very happy with the result, for it now means no more mud encased doors and walls from muddy paws and they will soon be looking out on a constantly verdant green area – calling it a lawn would be stretching the point.

We now wait to see how it all fares next winter!!!

We were very pleased to be asked to carry out another large installation using our most popular M52LO honeycomb grass mats. Very similar to the last project, but this time just outside Guildford in Surrey. We needed 100 of the grass mats, 3 rolls of the M9 stabilisation mesh, 300 pins and 600 cable ties.

As the installation was a fair way from where we could park the van, Charlie and I were very happy when a gentleman with a quad bike and trailer turned up offering his help. With over a tonne and a half of mats to move, though we were quick to accept his offer!

Although this installation was predominantly in a field for horses (Which we are very used to) we had a rather unusual request to install an area of mats inside an area for pigs (Which we are not quite so used to!). However, this proved to be a very useful exercise for as you can imagine, the pig-pen was more than ankle deep in very sloppy “mud”, conditions in which both Charlie and I thought that the mats would simply disappear into the mud.

But this was not the case; once the M9 mesh and M52LO heavy duty grass mats had been laid the area was transformed! We could immediately walk on the mats with no mud coming up through the now, very stable, surface. Once the grass grows up through the mats in springtime the area will be very different.

I hasten to add that we didn’t cover the whole area in mats, we did leave a sizeable area of mud for the pigs!

Earlier in November we were contacted by a customer in West Sussex who wanted to lay mats in a paddock, ahead of any downturn in the weather in the coming months.

We were delighted to supply 80 square metres of our highly rated M52LO mats, laid on a base of our M9 Mesh. The project used 900 M9 pins and 500 cable ties. As you can see, the result is stunning.

As a small company, we can offer an installation service on large projects up to 30-40 miles away, and on rare occasions have gone 50 miles for a larger installation.

We are able to support single stable installations or a small numbers of field mats up to 10 miles away.

Always remember though, that we can deliver any of our products direct to your door throughout the UK.