Pet turf

The pet turf install is the most-asked-about residential surface and the easiest to get wrong. Three things have to work at once: odor management, drainage, and surface temperature. Get one wrong and the homeowner is calling within six months.

Odor lives in the urine, not the turf. We use an anti-microbial backing — coated with a zeolite-based agent that breaks down ammonia at the polymer level — paired with a zeolite or zeofill infill that traps and converts the same compounds at the blade surface. The two layers do different jobs and both have to be present.

Drainage is the second layer. A pet area gets ten to twenty times the liquid load of a normal lawn, concentrated in small zones. We install pet surfaces on a 4-inch crushed concrete base with a ¾-inch flow-through fabric directly under the turf — the urine moves through the turf in under three seconds and never sits at the blade.

Surface temperature is the third. Standard turf will hit 140°F on a July afternoon in Boca; that’s too hot for a dog. We default to cooling-yarn surfaces (Ti-Cool, HeatBlock) on every pet install — the same install ten degrees cooler.

Pet installs run from 200 to 4,000 square feet. The most common size is a 600 sq ft side yard, two to four dogs, install completed in three days.