Grass vs turf: the comparison neither side publishes.

In total dollars, usually not: on our model defaults, turf runs about $1.43M over ten years (capital, maintenance, and an honest carpet-replacement reserve) against about $1.16M for competition-grade grass. Per hour of actual use, turf wins by roughly 3x: about $51 per playable hour versus $145 for grass, because turf supports around 2,800 hours a year and grass around 800. Whether turf "saves money" depends entirely on whether your program needs the hours. Most programs converting a field are converting because they do.

The carpet replacement. Turf carpet and infill are a 10-to-15-year asset, and replacing them runs $300,000 to $600,000 on a full-size field. Any 10-year comparison that ignores that liability is flattering turf. Our model accrues a $37,500-per-year replacement reserve (about $450,000 over 12 years) so the cliff is priced in from day one.

The hours ceiling and the real maintenance number. A grass field that hosts varsity football plus soccer plus band does not stay a good grass field: it supports roughly 8 to 12 hours of play a week before degrading, closes for 48 to 72 hours after rain, and competition-grade upkeep in North Texas runs $60,000 to $150,000 a year (the advocacy comparisons often quote recreational mowing budgets instead). Comparing a $1M turf field against a $25,000-a-year grass budget is comparing a stadium against a pasture.

Published per-hour figures for grass range from about $52 to $108, usually built on lower capital costs or recreational maintenance budgets. Our worksheet defaults to competition-grade assumptions with full capital included, which lands grass around $145 per hour. This is exactly why the worksheet ships with editable assumption cells: plug in your actual maintenance budget and water rate, and the model is yours, not ours.

Deliberately excluded from the model, and it only helps turf. DFW field rentals commonly run $75 to $250 per hour depending on sport and lighting, and a turf field has roughly 2,000 more rentable hours per year than grass. Districts and cities routinely return the capital cost inside five years once programming and rentals are counted. We leave it out of the default math so nobody can accuse the comparison of thumb-on-scale accounting.

Yes. Download the worksheet and edit the yellow cells, or send us your field size, current maintenance budget, and water rate and we will return the model populated with your actuals alongside a scoped construction number. That version is board-packet ready.