'Airfield System' for Greens Construction

[Lyne Morrison]

The USGA has recently announced their support of more widespread use of the Airfield Systems' design as an alternative to greens construction that strictly follows the USGA spec.

Anyone have experience with this form of construction? Does elimination of the gravel layer via the Airfield System provide more affordable greens construction for clubs?

http://usgatero.msu.edu/v12/n4-6.pdf

Thanks for your thoughts,
Lyne

[David Schofield]

I should state upfront that I have no experience with green construction, but I am familiar with geotextiles.

I would imagine that the gravel layer in the USGA section would occasionally clog, but there's so much void space there that it would likely take quite a while occur.  The geotextile layer in the Airfield section is essentially a impermeable material with several hundred thousand pinprick holes in it, each of which are easily clogged.  Given a few years, I would imagine that clogging of those holes will become the predominant failure mode of the Airfield section.  You could go with a "looser" geotextile layer, but that will just allow the fines into spacer layer.  

[Ronald Montesano]

Delete...the PDF is a good read.