6,000 SF playground turf conversion at Perfect Praise Academy

Bearcat Turf & Outdoors partnered with Green Space Learning on a 6,000 square foot playground conversion at Perfect Praise Academy, a daycare program in Fort Worth, Texas. We replaced a worn-down, weather-beaten play area with a year-round, kid-safe synthetic turf surface that the program can use every day, in any season, without worrying about mud, dust, ruts, or downtime.

The before-and-after says it as well as any words could.

Before After

July 2025 (before) vs. August 2025 (after) — 6,000 SF playground turf conversion at Perfect Praise Academy, Fort Worth.

The program’s ask

Perfect Praise Academy came to the conversation with a clear brief:

No more mud. Daily mess on shoes, on floors, on clothes — gone.
A safe surface kids could use every day, in any season, without the program having to close the play area for a wet morning or a hot afternoon.
Grant funding spent in a way that lasts. The decision wasn’t about cosmetics; it was about putting public-program dollars into a play surface that the program could still rely on fifteen years from now — not one that would need to be replaced in three.

Those three asks pointed at one answer: replace the worn-down ground with a properly engineered, playground-grade synthetic-turf surface — built to drain, built to last, built to stay safe under daily daycare use.

Why the conversion mattered

A daycare playground in North Texas has three enemies: summer heat that bakes the ground into hardpan, spring storms that turn play areas into mud for 72 hours, and the reality that dozens of kids running, falling, sliding, and bringing the play area inside on their shoes every day eventually wears a natural surface past the point where grass or wood mulch can recover.

Perfect Praise Academy’s old playground hit all three. Patchy. Uneven. Closed half the spring whenever it rained. Wood mulch that drifted into corners and exposed root systems where the kids ran most. The faculty was managing the play space — and the mud the kids tracked indoors — instead of using it.

The fix isn’t to fight the ground — it’s to replace it with a surface that doesn’t care about the weather. Playground-grade artificial turf is usable year-round, drains through the surface (not around it), resists wear from running and equipment use, doesn’t track mud or dust indoors, and stays cool enough for bare feet thanks to UV-stabilized fibers and proper infill spec.

What got installed

6,000 SF of TurfHub TH Play — TurfHub’s playground-specific spec turf. UV-stabilized polyethylene fiber engineered for repeated impact and traffic, non-flammable, anti-acid. Soft enough for kids to land on; durable enough for the daily wear of a full daycare program.
Engineered sub-base — 3”–4” of crushed stone in two compacted lifts at 95% Standard Proctor density. The same base spec we ship on residential putting greens, scaled up to handle 6,000 SF of high-impact use. No pillowing in year two, no settling around the play structures.
Drainage-first grading — laser-graded to drain water through the turf and across the engineered base, then out and away from the school building. North Texas storms move on; the playground is dry again within hours, not days.
Edge work around fixed equipment — turf cut and seamed flush to the play structures’ footers, with no exposed sub-base at the equipment-to-turf transition. No trip points, no gaps where mulch could settle.
15-year manufacturer warranty on the TH Play product. UV-stabilized, non-flammable, anti-acid yarn — the same warranty backbone that ships with every Bearcat install. This is the warranty horizon the grant-funded scope was built around.

Year-round, in any weather

For a daycare program like Perfect Praise Academy, the operational value of a year-round playground is hard to overstate:

No more mud tracked indoors. The single-biggest day-to-day complaint with the old surface, gone. Kids’ shoes, classroom floors, parent pickup — all stay clean.
Outdoor time isn’t weather-dependent. Spring storms used to close the playground for 1–3 days. Now the kids are back outside the same afternoon.
Summer mornings are usable. Without the dust and hardpan, the play area is comfortable from drop-off through pickup.
Faculty stop managing the surface. No raking mulch back into place, no reseeding patches, no roping off ruts after a wet weekend. The maintenance overhead is monthly, not weekly.
Grant dollars do their job for 15 years. The TH Play product carries a 15-year manufacturer warranty. The engineered sub-base is built to outlast the warranty. The grant funding stays useful through the full equipment lifecycle, not just the first season.
Photo-ready every day. Marketing photos, family tours, social media — the playground reads clean and inviting at any time of year. Enrollment matters.

Working with Green Space Learning

Green Space Learning led the broader playground design and learning-environment scope on this project. Bearcat scoped the turf surface portion and coordinated install around their schedule — sub-grade prep sequenced with equipment placement, turf seam routing planned to keep the most-trafficked zones (slide landings, structure transitions) on continuous panels rather than across seams.

For Texas schools, daycares, churches, and private-academy programs evaluating a playground refresh: this is the model. Green Space Learning + Bearcat Turf & Outdoors gives you a coordinated design + install relationship rather than two trades you have to manage in parallel.

Layer by layer

How the Perfect Praise Academy playground reads from the soil up:

Sub-grade preparation. Excavate the existing play surface to depth. Where the soil report calls for it, stabilize Fort Worth’s expansive clay before any aggregate goes down.
Geotextile separator fabric. Non-woven needle-punched separator above the sub-grade and below the engineered aggregate. Prevents silt migration into the base over the life of the install — critical for drainage performance through years 5, 10, 15.
Engineered aggregate base. 3”–4” of crushed stone, two-lift compaction at 95% Standard Proctor. Laser-graded for surface drainage, with grade routed away from the school’s building footprint.
Drainage routing. Surface-drainage grading sized for North Texas storm events, draining water through the turf and across the engineered base, then away from the building.
TH Play playground turf. Rolled, seamed with reinforced tape and adhesive (never just nailed), trimmed flush to equipment footers and any hardscape edges.
Engineered playground infill. Brushed in to the spec rate for the turf and use case. Plays cool, locks the fibers upright, distributes impact across the surface instead of concentrating it at footfall points.

This install did not require a shock pad — the existing playground equipment fall heights were within the impact attenuation range that TH Play turf + engineered infill + the compacted aggregate base support on their own. For installs where equipment fall heights require an ASTM F1292-rated foam pad underneath, that’s a separate sub-layer we add to spec. The full reference cross-section is on the sport-field specifications page and the ASTM standards reference — including F1292 (playground fall height), F1551 (drainage), F1487 (playground safety).

Playground turf FAQ

Is artificial turf safe for kids?

Yes. The TH Play product is non-flammable, anti-acid, UV-stabilized, and meets the playground-spec safety standards. Combined with the engineered aggregate base and the proper infill rate, the surface meets the impact-attenuation requirements for the play equipment on this kind of daycare installation. Honest answer: artificial turf is safer than the old worn-down surface it usually replaces, because the impact-attenuation is engineered and measurable instead of variable.

How does the turf hold up to a full daycare program using it every day?

It’s designed for it. TH Play uses a denser face weight and a more durable fiber than residential turf precisely because schools, daycares, and parks need it to survive thousands of footfalls per week. Combined with the engineered sub-base (which prevents the surface from pillowing or settling under load), a Bearcat playground install supports program-level traffic for 15+ years.

What about heat? Won’t it burn the kids in summer?

Cool-blend infill and UV-stabilized fibers keep playground turf 10–20°F cooler than asphalt and dark mulch under direct sun. A morning hose rinse drops it further on the hottest days. For comparison, the same Texas sun bakes packed dirt to surface temperatures that close a playground anyway — the question isn’t “is the turf hot?” but “is the turf usable at temperatures where everything else isn’t?” Answer: yes.

What’s the maintenance schedule for a daycare playground install?

Monthly: leaf blow, visual inspection, quick brush of high-traffic zones. Quarterly: deeper brush, infill top-off check, perimeter cleanup. Annually: third-party drainage and safety inspection if your program requires it. Versus the worn-down playground it replaced, the maintenance load drops to 10–15% of what natural surfaces required.

Can you spec to ASTM F1292 / IPEMA for fall-height attenuation when a project needs it?

Yes. For installs where playground equipment requires a critical fall-height rating beyond what the turf + engineered base + infill provides on its own (typically taller climbers, slides, or large composite structures), we add an ASTM F1292-rated closed-cell foam shock pad underneath the TH Play turf, sized to the highest equipment fall height on the play area. Documentation provided at install. Perfect Praise Academy’s equipment heights didn’t require a shock pad on this scope.

How does this work with grant funding?

We’re set up to quote, document, and invoice on a way that fits grant-funded scopes — fixed-price written quote, full product data sheets and warranty paperwork, COIs and submittals before mobilization, payment terms that align with grant-disbursement schedules. We can also segment quotes by phase if your funding releases in tranches.

Are you HUB Certified for school-district procurement?

Yes. Bearcat Turf & Outdoors is HUB Certified by the State of Texas. We respond to RFPs and qualified-bid invitations from Texas ISDs, charter schools, parks departments, daycare programs, and private academies. HUB Vendor Identification Number (VID) available on request.

Do you partner with playground design firms like Green Space Learning?

Yes. We coordinate inside the design firm’s project scope — sub-base prep sequenced with equipment placement, turf seam routing planned around high-traffic zones, install timing matched to the program’s operational windows. The Perfect Praise Academy install is the model.

Working with Bearcat on a daycare, school, or church playground install

Free site walks for any daycare program, school, church kids’ program, private academy, parks department, or playground-design firm planning a turf playground conversion in Fort Worth, Dallas, Aledo, or anywhere in DFW. Family-owned, woman-owned, HUB Certified, BBB Accredited, fully insured. Fixed-price quotes. 15-year manufacturer warranty. Grant-funded scopes welcomed and properly documented.

Get a free quote → · Playground turf service detail · Commercial athletic fields service · Pool builders & partners · Build a turf install estimate

Before

What we started with.

Decades of neglected grass and bare zones. Good bones — pool, sports court, kitchen all in place — but the surface tying it together had been losing the fight for years.