Tru Mark's Trail Blazing Blog

A recent website visitor asked the following question, "I line over 30 fields at our soccer complex in Houston,Texas area. Also can you recommend a paint. I am using a Graco field lazer liner. I am paying $25.00 for a 5 gallon bucket. That the lines are only lasting a little over a week. Is there any such paint that will last at least 3 weeks."

Here's our response with some recommendations.

You are receiving the best pricing on bulk latex paint (5-gallon pails) that I've recently encountered. It is hard to get a paint to last much longer than 10-14 days since the grass is growing and mowed at least once a week if not more often.

If you are basing your purchase primarily on price you'll probably not find another paint that will do any better. A better quality field marking paint is normally going to be priced closer to $40 to $50 range but it will still be hard to get the paint to last much more than 14-21 days. Since Graco FieldLazer only offers one spray tip applicator per pass it is less effective in covering both sides of the blade of grass when the grass blade is not standing close to vertical.

You might try and not dilute the paint as much (may already be doing this?). The better quality
field marking paints will have more solids that are ground finer and titanium dioxide (whitener) in the formulation. This will allow for increased dilution ratios, however the costs are going to significantly increase to more than double what you are currently paying. If the paint is not harming the grass at all then I would just dilute the paint with less water and see how that works.

I've sprayed undiluted paint with the Graco FieldLazer without any problems other than it takes a little longer to get the pump primed first. I always start out with priming with water to help this process.

You might mow the lines before you stripe which will help reduce the mowing off of the lines
when the rest of the field is mowed more often. I would not cut more than 1/2" of grass height from the standard height to avoid putting additional stress on the grass.

Another suggestion is to not irrigate for 12-24 hours after you've striped thus allowing the paint to fully dry as well as not painting until the grass blades are dry, late morning or afternoon.

You could try adding 1-2 ounces of a growth regulator to 1 gallon of diluted paint to slow down the grass growth. You normally only spray every 3rd or 4th week of the growing season. You do not want to over apply these products. If you have to overstripe your lines make sure you take your mixture ratio into consideration. There are several different types of growth regulators, for example Embark by PBI Gordan Corp. and Primo Maxx by Syngenta. You'll need to find a chemical distributor for these. You should check with your local golf course superintendent for some recommendations. Primo Maxx is typically priced at about 2-3 times that of Embark.

Labels: Turf _Tips