Fake grass & dogs

[coffeewithmilk]

Hi all,
Sorry if this should be in the gardening area/threads.

I've recently gotten artificial grass in my back garden. Has very good drainage.
My dog obviously uses the garden to go to the toilet.
I've noticed it's starting to smell and I've only had it a few weeks.

What is your solution? I pick up the poo immediately but all I can smell is dog wee.
I've just hosed it down and we did have a very heavy downpour of rain but that didn't seem to help.

Thank you

I've no advice sorry but I heard that the sun heats up the wee underneath the grass which is probably why it's smelling as it's been abit warmer.

I don’t want to sound mean, but, it’s plastic.
Of course it stinks!
One of its many, many downsides...

What sub base do you have? I have crushed limestone which helps the drainage.

It can smell a bit a few times a year but usually when it's been very very hot and we haven't had that weather yet. I am sat on it now with the dog and can't smell anything.

You can buy artificial grass sanitiser from places like Amazon but I find that simply making sure to use a watering can after picking up poo is sufficient. Maybe do that after pees as well.

You need to be careful in the summer it heats up really badly

Sounds like your drainage is inadequate

We had false grass and two dogs in our last house with no problems at all.
Our installers did not use sand or a liner, which would hold the smell, so that helped. They knew what we wanted it for and laid it accordingly.
We did still care for it though with regular cleaning.
I cant remember exactly what the composition was, but we used lemon juice and water, blasting it with the Karcher twice a year.
On a rare occasion (boiling hot summers day), that we did get a whiff, something like 'wee free' did the trick.

I know there are a lot of downs to false grass, but we lived with a garden that did not drain well. In the winter it was just a mud heap. Wet, horrible mud. The false grass sorted that problem!

Oh, and my grass NEVER heated up badly.

Thanks everyone.
I know artificial grass is plastic but I couldn't handle going through another winter with the grass and soil we had previously. You would sink as you walked on it!

It has good drainage underneath, I'll try find a disinfectant to spray on it.
Thanks again!

Terrible for the environment. I despair that this horrible stuff is becoming so popular. No worms or insects for the birds , kills wildlife.

What @Cleebope2 and @DiddlyWiddly have said. Grim grim stuff.
What's wrong with grass and soil? It's a garden!
Everyone has paved front gardens, plastic back gardens. I actually despair. (And over compensate with not mowing my lawn, planting stuff for the pollinators etc).

I actually have quite a large planter the whole width and sides of the garden filled with an abundance of plants/trees and flowers. Lots of insects and worms in there.
And lots of soil in the front garden too.
Thanks 👍🏻

@coffeewithmilk I agree. Gets exhausting trying to justify not having a garden that resembles Glastonbury at its worst!
I too kept 3/4 of the garden with grass, native flowering hedging, trees and dense borders perfect for wildlife.
The false grass was put in to prevent a very real problem. Not because I was in a one woman mission to destroy the planet
Lemon juice, a Marcher and cleaning stuff as mentioned earlier should do the job - good luck!

Thank you @Ratched
It is a lot more practical for me. I can't even explain how the soil was before. It was so so bad.

Thank you for your suggestion. I'll try the lemon juice

... it's still plastic that will be littering the planet for 1000's of years.

(... and all because waterlogged & muddy gardens are unwelcome during the winter months)

@Sinuhe

... it's still plastic that will be littering the planet for 1000's of years.

(... and all because waterlogged & muddy gardens are unwelcome during the winter months)

I agree, i do sympathise with OP in that a waterlogged garden isn’t terribly pleasant to walk around in and spend time in but I imagine a more eco friendly solution could have been found.

Converting the waterlogged ground into a bog garden, a redesign with a path going around the boggy bit, a Mediterranean style gravel garden, I’m sure there would have been some alternative solution.

It’s a horrific product and it shouldn’t be on sale.
Micro plastics are already in all of our food and water and soil and oceans and here we are, spreading yet more plastic!

We had our small raised lawn replaced with artificial grass. It was so much easier to cope with dogs going in and out, particularly during the winter, as the rest of the garden was paved and stoned. I used to buy cheap pine disinfectant, mix in a watering can and water onto the grass when it was getting a bit smelly. Ours did warm up in the sun, and the dogs enjoyed lying on it, so it was the best option year round.

We had expensive artificial grass. It gets hot.. I'm sorry but it does unless you have a very shady garden. Ours is South facing and it was too hot for the dog, too hot for bare feet and yes it started to smell quickly even though my girl never pooed on it and rarely weed as she didn't like it,
We ended up laying another (real) lawn!!!

Mine gets hot when it's late 20s early 30s so the really really hot days in summer but part of it is in the shade so always usable. The easiest way to tell is just to walk barefoot on it. If it's too hot for you to walk on it's too hot for the dog.

We have both real and artificial lawns as they are in completely different areas and one survives well and the other didn't. Was the best thing we ever did and I have no regrets getting ours.

I buy artificial grass cleaner from amazon and it works a treat! I don’t have to do it that often in winter but regularly through he summer and it’s great, we’ve had the grass down for about 5 years and it’s the best thing we did!

I have a boarding kennels with an astroturf paddock.

Mine doesn't smell and you can only imagine the amount of pee on it.

I use a commercial disinfectant solution in a watering can and periodically 'water' the grass.

I also have a thermometer to measure the temperature of it and it is yet to get too hot to burn dogs paws

Best thing we ever did was that paddock, it gets used far more than our real grass ones.

How horrible for the eco system and then dumping cleaning chemicals all over it?

Gardens should be safe spaces for worms and insects and pollinators and other fauna. Sometimes I really despair.

Thank you to those who have understood my frustrations without bearing judgement on the fact I have artificial grass.
I will try your suggestions.

Thank you

Biological washing liquid (eg Ariel) mixed with warm water in watering can.

"Water" grass but be prepared for people to look at you like you are crackers.

As well as the plastic grass, just be aware that all the chemicals you are hosing it down with are going straight into the natural environment rather than into water treatment facilities.
Can't you just hose away the pee with water & put up with some residual whiff rather than polluting streams & rivers?

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

As well as the plastic grass, just be aware that all the chemicals you are hosing it down with are going straight into the natural environment rather than into water treatment facilities. Can't you just hose away the pee with water & put up with some residual whiff rather than polluting streams & rivers?

Thank you.

@PerveenMistry

How horrible for the eco system and then dumping cleaning chemicals all over it?

Gardens should be safe spaces for worms and insects and pollinators and other fauna. Sometimes I really despair.

The other 5 acres of our land is left to natural habitat. I think that more than offsets a 160m2 paddock.