The 7 Most Common Mistakes When Installing Grass and How to Avoid Them

Cheap Comes at a Cost: The Real Price of a Bad Installation

I've seen plenty of excited homeowners waste hundreds or thousands of euros trying to save a few. I'm talking about the famous "weekend DIY disasters": puddles that never dry, or grass that looks like a badly assembled chessboard. If you want to avoid throwing your money away, here are the worst mistakes:

1. Forgetting the pile direction: The king of mistakes. Artificial grass comes on rolls and the pile leans one way. Join two pieces facing different directions and they'll look like two different colours.
2. Skipping ground preparation (on soil): Eyeballing the levelling and not properly compacting the gravel base leads to bald patches, dips and puddles within a few weeks of rain.
3. Not laying weed-block membrane: Skip this and you'll discover the power of nature — weeds sprouting straight through the drainage holes of your shiny new lawn.
4. Gluing factory edges together: Joining two pieces using the last few centimetres exactly as they come from the factory is an aesthetic disaster. Always trim off one tuft row from each side before joining.
5. Double-sided tape in wet outdoor areas: Adhesive tape is great, but not on soil or anywhere it'll rain a lot. Use seaming tape and two-part glue instead, or the roll will end up coming apart.
6. Overdoing the silica sand: Using too much sand (or worse, beach sand) will smother the grass and ruin the drainage. Always use dry, rounded silica.
7. Choosing cheap commercial-grade grass for heavy home use: Cheap comes at a cost. Some 5 mm grass is designed purely for short-lived decorative use. Never put it on your family terrace.

Hiring true professionals is the biggest long-term saving you can make. A good installer sells you 15 years of peace of mind, with no headaches.