Why Vacuuming Is Bad For Artificial Grass

One of the best-selling points of synthetic grass is that it is low maintenance. Emphasis being on low, which is not the same as saying that artificial grass requires zero maintenance.

The little maintenance that your artificial grass will require will involve mostly regular cleaning and touching up on the turf to ensure that it is looking and feeling its best. On the subject of cleaning, we often get asked by our clients about whether or not vacuuming is an option when it comes to synthetic grass.

Using a vacuum is fast and a lot easier for debris removal from your artificial grass. Faster and easier does hold its own appeal and it’s easy to see why you may want to jump in and start vacuuming away. However, even with that in mind, our experts at Perth Artificial Grass do not recommend vacuuming your synthetic lawn.

Why? Here Is A Look At Two Reasons Why We Advise Against Vacuuming Synthetic Grass

The Infill Gets Sucked Up

Infill is spread between the artificial grass blades and offers many benefits including keeping the blades in an upright position, protecting the backing layer and adding to the natural look and feel of the grass. However, when using a vacuum, this infill material will get sucked up, leaving your grass without all the aforementioned benefits of having the infill in place.

There is always an option to carefully segregate the debris after vacuuming and put back the infill. This is, however, quite a lot of work and you may not be able to evenly distribute the infill, leaving some parts of your artificial grass exposed to the deleterious effects of not having any or enough of infill, and putting a little too much in other areas.

Having to do so much work beats the idea of investing in artificial grass, especially because the promise of minimal maintenance is without doubt, one of the reasons why you made the decision to buy artificial grass.

As touches on this concern, vacuuming artificial grass that does not contain infill is a non-issue. However, most, if not all installations done today have infill materials because people are more aware of the benefits of having the infill applied and no professional installer would agree to skip this step.

Gradual Loosening Of The Turf

The suction power, especially from a powerful vacuum, can cause the synthetic turf to come loose over time. The different layers, or membranes that hold together in a closely-knit assembly to form the synthetic turf will slowly become loose, if the vacuuming is done frequently. The result is turf that appears to be sagging, and the different layers coming apart, which makes it look unappealing and old.

Should you vacuum your synthetic grass? As backed by the two reasons highlighted above, we do not recommend it. However, just because you shouldn’t vacuum your artificial lawn is no excuse to leave it looking dirty with debris such as dried leaves lying all over the place.  We strongly recommend using a simple broom, a brush with hard bristles, a low or medium power leaf blower, or a rake for debris removal. For artificial grass that is installed indoors, stick to using a brush or broom and your synthetic turf will look as good as when it was first installed for a very long time.   For more on cleaning and maintaining your artificial grass, refer to another one of our blog posts here in which we cover the subject in a more comprehensive and in-depth approach.