The Bare Foot Test by Leie Sualua

Many years ago, before our current water shortage, I spent a few days in the summer, installing Bermuda sod in my home courtyard. My brother and cousin came over and assisted with the installation. It took a few days to prepare, and half a day to install. When it was done, my cousin took off his shoes and said, “Now it’s time for the ultimate test, the Bare Foot test”. I never heard this before, but we took off our shoes and felt the cool grass between our toes and it felt incredible. Fast forward 12 years, and I found myself in the City of Irvine at the OC Great Park with our Director of Re-search and Development. Two artificial turf fields are present side by side. One field has crumb rubber infill that is coated in a state-of-the-art cooling material known as HydroChill, the other field without. My Direc-tor of R&D looks at me and says, “have you done the bare foot test?” I said “no”, but now that I’m writing this, I have…….sort of. Bare Foot Test 1 - Hydrochill So I walk on to the coated field, bare footed, on a warm 80 degree day slightly before lunch. It’s warm! I’m directed to take a small step forward. It’s warm! I’m looking at our Director and wondering if this HydroCh-ill is working. He directs me to take another small step and says “do you notice it?” “Notice what, the warm turf?” He says “no, the turf gets cooler as you stand on it.” So, I took another step, and I did notice it. Took another, noticed it again. Ah ha, I see! Bare Foot Test 2 – Non-treated field So I trotted over to this beauty and took a step on it, warm! Took another step, hot! I felt no relief of the field cooling beneath my feet. Took another step, hotter! It was time for me to go, but much too late, as I burned the bottom of my feet. I felt the effects of that turf for the next month. Conclusion: Through many interviews of coaches, players and referees we find that the heat of the field is of the big-gest concern when they are standing around. HydroChills ability to allow a hydrophobic rubber crumb, re-tain moisture is an enormous benefit in warm to hot climates. HydroChill is the only evaporative cooling system on the market, and the only system to provide a guarantee of a minimum 30 degrees of heat re-duction. ASTM does not have a bare foot test, but in my opinion, relative to artificial turf, it passed with fly-ing colors, and that’s incredible.