‘Wash and brush up’ Aquatrax style for Swansea University
The International Sports Village at Swansea University is home to premier indoor and outdoor facilities, including two all-weather Astro surfaces, natural turf pitches, tennis courts, 50m swimming pool, sports hall and gym.
The gem of the outdoor facilities is the Class A, International Standard 8-lane athletics track that hosts the university's athletes, external community and athletics clubs as well as top-level sporting events. Continuing their relationship, Replay Maintenance recently carried out their unique Aquatrax® process on the track, to bring it back to an 'as new' condition.
Athletics Facilities Manager, Andrew Griffiths, is supported by a team of grounds staff who help in the maintenance of both the natural and artificial surfaces on the site. "Our in-house team are great at staying on top of the general maintenance of the facilities but a few years ago we decided to bring in a specialist company to deep clean the athletics surface." Andrew spoke to a few local tracks as well as the facilities team at the Alexandra Stadium in Birmingham, and after hearing good things about Replay, called them in. "Our track is in quite a leafy area so the debris from the trees, as well as its daily usage means it does get quite dirty. We aim to give the track a deep clean every two years. Replay's visit in March was the third time they've cleaned it with the Aquatrax® unit."
Aquatrax® is a unique process, combining pressure washing and vacuum extraction. The machine applies pressure water jets to dislodge the dirt before a vacuum extraction system removes the dirty water to a tank on the machine leaving a clean surface, free of contaminants. First developed for the maintenance of polymeric athletics tracks, it has since been adapted to clean dirt and algal growth from unfilled or water-based synthetic pitches.
Replay have used the Aquatrax® machine on the two water-based Astro pitches at Swansea University, most recently in November 2015, when Andrew commented, "Each pitch took two and a half days to clean and it was 4 days to transform the track and all ancillary areas such as the long jump approach and pole vault run-up. Having worked with Replay for a few years now we know we're going to get good quality results. The work they do makes a significant difference to the look and performance of our facility, it looks like a new track again!"