Surface Testing

There are many ways of quantifying the performance of sports surfaces in order to inform their management and improvement.  We are able to undertake all of those commonly undertaken for natural turf surfaces and some for artificial surfaces including:
  • Sward composition and ground cover - Sport England requirement
  • Shoot density
  • Sward height - Sport England requirement
  • Green speed (golf) - using the Stimpmeter
  • Hardness - using the Clegg Impact Soil Tester as required by Sport England
  • Evenness (profiling - natural and artificial surfaces) - Sport England requirement
  • Waviness (natural and artificial surfaces)
  • Slope - using laser levelling techniques - - Sport England requirement
  • Carpet quality (eg tuft density, pile height, dTex etc - artificial surfaces)
  • ​Surface levels (3D Surveys) - ​​ Surface levels almost always need to be assessed for sports pitch development projects.  We can undertake levels surveys ourselves over small areas or arrange for our surveyor to carry out a comprehensive survey that will be useful throughout a project.
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Smoothness and evenness

These qualites are essential features of most sports surfaces.  Tim Lodge invented a device for the measurement of golf green smoothness - the Lodgemeter.  The patent for this was filed on 22 October 2005 and was granted to the inventor on 9 June 2010 (Patent No. GB2442787).  The Lodgemeter represents a completely new idea in the field of golf playing quality assessment and we continue to refine and optimise the design.

​We have also developed a device for measuring the evenness of sports surfaces.  Although this is a Sport England requirement for example for football pitch appraisal, the method recommended to determine this we believe is less than satisfactory.  Our device gives a much more reliable numerical statement of the degree of evenness of any surface. 
Measurement of hardness, evenness and moisture content of natural turf

Measurement of hardness, evenness and moisture content on natural turf surface
Lodgemeter for measuring smoothness of golf greens

The first prototype of ‘The Lodgemeter’, patented device for measuring the smoothness of golf greens.