Edinburgh Leisure, which manages and maintains all leisure facilities for Edinburgh City Council, has signed a five-year agreement with Replay Maintenance to undertake surface maintenance of its multiple synthetic sports pitches, spread across six sites.

Edinburgh Leisure’s Shirley Bowman believes it’s the best way of managing costs whilst keeping sports pitches at peak performance. “Replay Maintenance undertakes its Revive service on all the pitches an agreed number of times a year. I know they will do the work when they are scheduled to, in a safe and professional manner, and the quality is excellent so it’s one less thing I and my groundsmen have to worry about.”

The Revive process uses a specially developed, single operator machine to remove contaminants from in-filled and water-based synthetic turf carpet as well as polymeric surfaces. Rotary brushes penetrate deeper into the in-fill than static brushes, breaking up the contamination crust and removing it with a powerful vacuum filter system for disposal off site. The sand or rubber in-fill is then filtered, dropped back onto the surface and worked in using a static brush head in the first instance, followed by a drag mat. The process helps reduce compaction of the surface, enhances its porosity and helps maintain the playing characteristics.

Luke McGeechan at Replay Maintenance says it’s an increasing trend: “We are seeing more and more customers who want regular maintenance to support what their groundsman are doing. Service agreements are a great way of scheduling the specialist maintenance of synthetic sports surfaces but at a known cost over the short or long-term. State-of-the-art processes, such as Revive, keep sports pitches playing better for longer.”

Shirley Bowman believes there is also an added advantage; “We can contact Replay at any time if we have any queries about any of the artificial sports surfaces we have. Their advice and guidance is always really useful and they respond quickly to requests for repairs, which are very reasonably priced.”

All Replay service agreements, which can be set at intervals to suit the customer include, free of charge, pre and post-maintenance tests with the Fieldman testing device. This records the difference the maintenance is making to the playing surface and enables the operator to plan future maintenance far more effectively.

www.replaymaintenance.co.uk