astroturf! (my testimony about why carpet is bad)

[alienfry]

well, not all carpet is bad. one year i bought a 10x12 rug from home depot, short carpet. no moop. this was designed to be moved all over.

this last year we brought used carpet from a buddy's house.

basically, i will feel forever guilty about all the moop that it made.

it shed.

and so now i'd like to say that my camp will never use carpet again. it sheds. plus, it's heavy. and it gets dirty real fast. and it's hot.

forever more we will use astroturf!

this is my testimony.

have you a connection to cheap stuff? please let me know. thanks!

jaredpaul1981@yahoo.com /// aliensoverkathanika@yahoo.com

[Alpha]

Remember to sew or burn the edges of your astroturf to prevent it from fraying, or the moop will make your carpet sheddings look like dust in the wind...

[Badger]

have you a connection to cheap stuff? please let me know. thanks!

Kitten and puppy fur work well in my camp.

[ScottV]

I used 16 ounce denim.

Found 60'x5' for about 60$ with shipping on Ebay

The stuff rolls up small, is pretty durn tough and fits in a commercial laundry machine if chopped into 10 foot lengths (did hose it down on the driveway first).

I just overlapped the ten foot sections to get three 10'x10' floors for my dodecadomes.

Should last a few more seasons.



ScottV

[Bob]

Cheap astroturf knockoffs are worse. The "grass" "blades" are made of very thin plastic, turn brittle in the sun & heat, and tend to break off en masse.

I use woven polypropylene geotextile, but there's nothing wrong with short-nap synthetic carpet aside from the extra weight and bulk. Vinyl-backed carpet won't ravel as much.

[Chai Guy]

One word about carpet. We had a large (30 ft. in diameter) dome one year and we were able to pick up some free carpet to cover the entire floor. This was in 2000 and it rained, not a lot, but a little. Well, water got under the carpet and mixed with playa forming that wonderful and sticky playa mud. Then the mud hardened, adding a serious amount of weight to the all ready heavy carpeting. We had to spend hours knocking off chunks of playa from the carpeting just to roll it up. What a huge pain!

I'm not sure it would have worked for our dome, but since then I've used woven grass mats, they don't hold dirt/mud, are easy to clean, fairly inexpensive and very reusable.

[robotland]

This last year we used heavy old canvas tarps for flooring- Tent and awning custom houses are a good source for these- Even if they're a little raggedy they don't moop and pack small.....And they trap just enough playa dust to retain year-round BRC ambience!

[unjonharley]

I found a 9x12 canvas paint tarp at Big Lots (for cheap)

[robotland]

Thanks- I'll go check there, as I want more of them!

[Bob]

Typical cheap painter's dropcloths aren't treated, so will mold & mildew if you store them damp, and shrink & wrinkle weirdly after washing. I use them for tent walls, adding grommets every 12" or so.

Grass mats? Reminds me of pulling tons of straw out of the playa after the 1998 rain-soaked event.

[unjonharley]

I wash my cheap painters traps. Then hang then over the fence. Haveing some one help me I tug then into shape. They don't take up much storage space

[vic]

We have had good experiences with carpet in fairly small sizes (about 10 x 10). We put out the word that our camp was looking for carpet and intercepted some on the way to the land fill. Keeps the dust down, feels good on bare feet, and we drop it off at a land fill on the way home. I agree that it's comparatively heavy and bulky, but if you have a way to get it to the playa and back, it's worth the extra effort. We have not had trouble with sheding.

[robotland]

I found some great cheapo 5" wide duct tape at a surplus store, which is great for edging carpet scraps. Just fold and tromp.

[Bob]

Suggestion:

- find candidate materials, pref. no more than a square yard or so.

- hose down or leave out in the weather for a week or so

- tromp in some mud (pref. clayey soil rather than potting mix) to simulate playa conditions after an intense rainfall event

- simulate dealing w/ trial mat'ls wrt removing clay buildup, hanging & drying the test materials, & packing in your vehicle

- multiply, along w/ a suitable factor of uncertainty, to anticipate playa-scale conditions

Another popular topic is how to secure such flooring mat'l to the ground, esp. in the case of a dance surface. Home improvement stores and such stock U-shaped "staples" of spring-steel wire in the landscaping dept., as well as gutter spikes in the raingutter dept., and 12" lengths of 3/8" rebar may work with a sharp 90-deg+ bend in the top -- all should probably be pounded below the playa & carpet surface, and rechecked periodically.

[alienfry]

"U-shaped "staples" of spring-steel wire in the landscaping dept., as well as gutter spikes in the raingutter dept"

oooh.

what we used for a small patch of astro turf last year (we had croquet; did i mention this already? oh well if i did)

anyhoo we used leftover metal tent stakes but those U shape things you speak of seem a lot safer.

[MistaBiggs]

Has anyone tried boat carpet? (similiar to astroturf)

[robotland]

that feltlike "indoor/outdoor" carpet is very hardy stuff, and stays together nicely...It also dries quickly. We used it in our old basement and as a covering for our concrete steps out front, where it endured sun and flood and traffic. Astro seems to get brittle over time, and actually breaks down in sunlight over time.

[MistaBiggs]

So, in your opinion -- the indoor / outdoor / boat-type carpet would be better than both reg. carpet (strictly indoor) or astroturf?

(Speaking strictly from a Playa-type atmosphere / environment.)

[robotland]

if I understand the nature of boat carpeting correctly, than YES. Indoor carpet is stiff, heavy and unravelly, as is astro....Astro dries quickly, but frays and sheds badly. Indoor weighs a ton when soaked and caked with playamud. (It didn't really rain last year, but it has in years past- whether it's rehydrated by a passing dust control tanker, rain or your camp shower, playamud is wickedly tenacious stuff!) The only allweather carpet that I can endorse is the non-nappy, feltlike stuff that about a quarter-inch thick. Available at most of yer big box stores, in black, blue or green.You probably don't want the black......

[whaleboy]

So what's the cheapest option? I bought a big assed remnant of carpet one year, not even all that cheap, like 150-200$, and that was good,but big, heavy, got gross, and where the hell did it go?? nowhere to store it, it was gross, i think it went to a landfill. Damn.

so carpet's only so-so.

This denim idea... I am intrigued. How cheap?

astroturf doesn't sound very good.

Howzabout heavy plastic? 100'x10' roll of 4 mil is only about 80$. this is for inside shade sructures. Not that nice to rest any bare skin against, would get hot and shitty where the sun hits it, but easy, big, and cheap. And involves plastic which is horrible stuff.

looking for solutions.

[dragonfly Jafe]

if you can get the billboard vinyl sign material, it works great.

[Elorrum]

billboard vinyl sign material is great. I have a floor that announces garage door installation, general installation services, and spring ladder specialties. I'd turn it over, but the other sides are all white, and I don't want the glare.

[ibdave]

I'll 3rd second the billboard recycling.. Seen the painter canvas tarps being used alot also. cost more but last many years and washable to some degree

[ygmir]

IBD:
weren't you sporting an astroturf merkin last year?

[phil]

Louise and I use muslin painters tarps after years of looting carpet from dumpsters outside carpet sellers.

We use one on the playa, with a back up. They are washable, and we wash it in one of those big commercial washers at the local laundromat. The tarps shrink, but not so much they become too small to use. They're thin and tear, but they're easy for Louise to fix (she says).

Eventually, the muslin becomes frail and won't hold together on the playa, so we give it to the landfill in Reno.

There are several places in our area that install carpet, and we were able to be picky on what we took from dumpsters. I can't imagine using a carpet for more than one Burn. After a week on the playa, they're soaked in playa powder. I can't imagine it ever coming clean.

[ibdave]

IBD:
weren't you sporting an astroturf merkin last year?

Yup that was me until you grabbed it and turned it into your new toupee.

[Bounce530]

makes me feel better to know I was sliding down Phils head and not IBD's cock...

[EmilyD]

Thanks for the idea to use painting tarps. I was going to buy some indoor/outdoor carpet but the tarps will be much lighter (and weight is an issue for us.) But...I learned a great way to keep such things stuck in the ground from some folks at Slab City. If you've been to the wonderful library there you may have noticed scraps of carpet that were held down by really long nails punched through the center of tin can lids. The can lid is key to keeping the nail down in the ground. They don't get the kind of winds there that happen on the playa so I'm going to pound metal stakes into can lids to keep our heavy duty painting tarp in the ground. Does that sound like it will work? Experienced folks, please give input, thanks.

[AntiM]

Great big washers work as well as tin can lids and are smooth. But they aren't free....

[theCryptofishist]

Okay. Last year the playa surface was so crappy that the only way that I could get around inside my tent, and even to get in and out, was to lay down carpet and nail it to the playa. I don't know that I can use something else. Any thoughts?