Sand topdressing measurement by exact methods
There are a lot of reasons to apply just the right amount of sand topdressing. Too much is no good, and too little is a problem too. The starting point with figuring out the right amount of sand to apply to your turfgrass is to know exactly how much you’ve been applying. This sounds simple and straightforward, but a lot of people don’t know the exact amount of sand that has been applied.
In two videos, I have shown how to measure the amount of sand applied, and I have explained why I prefer to think about and communicate about sand topdressing as a depth.
This video shows three different ways—easy ways—to measure the sand application rate. One is checking mass by area, another is checking volume by area, and a third is looking at total sand applied over total area topdressed.
Each of those methods gives an initial answer that is either a mass or a volume of sand applied to a known area of ground. This, of course, can be simplified to a depth of sand applied, which is what this video is about. If you measure the volume of sand, then you can go directly to depth. If you’ve measured mass of sand, you can use the bulk density of sand, 1.56 g/cm3, to convert the mass to a volume and from that one has the depth.