Great-North

I'm from Canada and we are looking into doing some work on our runway. Because of the high maintenance for grass we have considered the petromat or geotex solution. I was wondering how material is holding out so far on those that have done it? Has there been no problems in the colder climates? What is best woven or non woven? Thanks.

jedi

My Feedback: (7)

great-North,

Try this for more info


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/tt.asp?forumid=190

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

Ours is woven Geotex. The cold has little if any effect. The snow melts from it faster then the grass. Good thing because it can't be plowed or shoveled without dammage.
As far as how it's holding up. Ours will be 5 years old this summer. We have to fix a few prop cuts now and then. And drive the mower across the staples a few times a year. They try to work up a little. Other than that its fine. There are different grades of the stuff. We used the better on the runway and the less exspensive on the taxi way. There is no difference so far between the two. Our runway has a UV rating of 90% and the taxi way is UV 70%. Down the road I'm sure the 90% will be a little better. We set aside $500. a year for the eventual replacement. This will more then cover the cost.

David

Great-North

I've read here that some have used a gravel base and some have just laid it on top of the existing grass. What did your club do? Where you overlapped yours does it not leave a ridge that sticks up a bit? Does this make it difficult for the planes to taxi over the ridge going in one direction?

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

We prepped ours like asphalt was going in. Rolled and packed dirt. We would have put it on the grass but our site was not level. Amarillo Tx put their on the grass with no problems.(that i know of). The seams do not effect the planes at all. Our runway is 46'x500'. we have seams going both directions. The material is on a 15'x300' roll. This made our runway 7 seperate pieces. If you want a pic of something specific let me know. I will post it here for you.

david

Great-North

Thanks for the info. We are just waiting for pricing to see what the cost is going to be. I think it will be expensive, but if you compare it to the cost of planting grass and watering and fertilizer and mowing, the geotex runway should be worth it in end.

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

When ours went down it was right at $3500. Thats for the 45'x500 runway/12'x200 ramp and three 12x50 taxiways. Plus the 7000 staples and 600 spikes. The spikes were not needed but we didn't know that at the time. No labor is not in that price. There was 7 of us putting it down and we did it in a week of evenings.

David