What’s it really cost to maintain an athletic field?

[Sammy]

From Turf Tips
02/08/2010http://www.agry.purdue.edu/turf/tips...ticfields.html

Whether you are maintaining a professional, university field or a local soccer field because your daughter is on the team, it is difficult to get an accurate estimate of the costs to maintain an athletic field. From my experience, we tend to dramatically underestimate the actual cost of maintaining athletic turf. Tom Samples and his colleagues from the University of Tennessee assembled an exhaustive expense report for maintaining a bermudagrass field including labor, equipment and fuel costs, depreciation, paint, etc. Tom’s example field was bermudagrass that was overseeded with perennial ryegrass and topdressed once, painted six times, and mowed 62 times per year. The final cost of maintenance for this field was $9700/year. Though every field is slightly different and we can argue about the finer points of what should or shouldn’t be used in the maintenance plan, this publication has very useful information where each manager can use their own set of circumstances to help calculate actual expenses.



The University of Tennessee publication is available at http://utextension.tennessee.edu/pub...iles/SP651.pdf

[completelawncare]

Sammy,

I have read that article myself before today. Our member tomk sent it to me a few weeks ago.

I don't think many fields are cared for as well as they describe, but it does give a good idea of true costs.

[Sammy]

I thought you might like it.

[IMPACT]

I'll have to read the article, but I am getting tax prep together and can tell you what the fields we maintain roughly cost for 2009. Area one is about 6.5 acres and total billing was a little over 15K for weekly mowing,2x fert, 1x overseeding and aeration. Area two is about 12 acres and generated around 20k for similar programs, but no overseeding.