Sacramento Synthetic Lawn Sales Firm Struggling To Hire Fast Enough

Governor Jerry Brown's April 1st, 2015 mandatory water reductions to achieve a 25-percent statewide reduction in drinkable urban water usage through February 28, 2016 has gotten droves of homeowners looking into synthetic lawns.

Purchase Green's Sacramento Manager Haley Camden of Rancho Cordova reports that "Interest has more than doubled in terms of inbound phone calls, walk-ins and website submissions since the April 1st announcement for Q2 2015."

"Yes, we are struggling to hire fast enough to keep up with demand, but will likely have more than twice as many employees by mid 2015 as we did the start of 2014," she said.

"Synthetic Lawns are typically made of 3 components," explains Camden. " A primary backing that is a geotextile fabric similar to a weed barrier, a 'yarn' that is generally a polyethylene plastic for the actual grass blades and a secondary coating that is a glue, that is either latex or polyurethane."

"The lawns require no water, saving an average homeowner 37 gallons of water per square foot per year. A typical residence with 1,000 square feet of lawn may use 700,000 gallons of water in its useful lifetime. The typical artificial grass installation pays for itself within 3 to 5 years when compared to natural lawn, especially when considering savings on irrigation and landscape maintenance."

"There is no maintenance really unless for cleaning pet urine, or brushing up from time to time if the grass mats from high traffic.  You can avoid matting by choosing heavier face weight products that are made to withstand high traffic, similar to carpet. Not having to mow the yard can spare the air as much pollution as a car driving on the freeway in traffic for 10 hours," she said.

"The average price range for the average homeowner is typically $7 - $9 per square feet for a turnkey install. Products can range $2 - $4 of that cost, though there are government rebate programs in place that can be as high as $3 per sq. ft. depending upon the location and rebating agency. A standard warranty to expect on the artificial turf is 10 years."

Karen Hansen M.S. Earth Sciences, has been an educator and consultant who is currently an analyst regarding land and other public information records. She lives and works in Sacramento, CA. She has been writing about earth and the environmental sciences for Examiner.com since May of 2010. Find her work in several sections of the publication. You can find her work at SF Solar Energy Examiner, SF Environmental News Examiner and Environmental News Examiner