Anyone made their own topdresser?

[Blagadan]

Wondering if anyone has had a go at making a lawn top dresser for spreading sand? I've been toying with the idea of making one. I have tried to use a fertiliser spreader but the sand is too wet and doesnt flow. It need something to grab the sand from the bottom of the pile rather than expect the sand to fall through a 1inch hole in the bottom of the hopper...




Anyone?

[jimgerken]

I can add a little. A grass seeder sometimes has a little paddle wheel deal that is ground driven, to stir the seed and keep it moving, inside the tank, just above the outlet area. Can this help the sand keep moving?

BTW, what does top-dressing with sand do for your lawn?

[Blagadan]

I know the item you are talking about, an "agitator" i think its called... in my case, it didnt do much for loosening up the damp sand. It just carves a groove in the sand from what I figure. Damp sand tends to clump together. It would be fine if i didnt have to spread so much. I tried leaving a ton or so of dry sand indoors for a few months to dry it out and it did help a bit but still didn't flow like grass seed.
The amount of sand I would need to top dress 3/4 acre with 1/4inch of sand would be a big task to keep indoors to dry out.

Heres another design:



Why Sand...? I have terrible clay soil. I have been adding good quality top soil to my lawn for a few years now (using wheelbarrow and shovel mainly) but it has not made as much of an improvement as I'd like. I spoke to a grounds keeper of a local golf course and he recommended i start top dressing with coarse sand to loosen the soil as part of my on going soil improvement scheme. He recommended spreading 1/4 inch layer of sand over the lawn and to brush or rake it in. I would like to build up the sand over a few years to help improve the surface drainage and help to maintain a level smooth surface...
They use a gritty sand in the 1/8th to 1/16th grain size.

[RonMar]

I wonder if a drop spreader, or some larger variant(drop roller mechanism attached to a dump bed trailer?) would work better than a broadcast spreader. Or perhaps some variation of a manure spreader. The device you pictured looks pretty complex. Considering this is also something you are only going to need to do once or maybe twice, have you looked to see if it can be rented?

[bx24]

Although it would not be nearly as elegant, why not simply use a dump trailer with the gate hinged on top, and the bottom restrained with a chain to control the drop rate.

This would not be nearly as pretty, but depending on how much of this you need to do, you could get away a lot cheaper and end up with a dump trailer to do other things with.

I am thinking of something like one of the two of these:

Pronovost- Dump trailers - Off-road service

or

King Kutter Incorporated

Good luck

[bx24]

The one thing I forgot to mention is that you could rig up a simple rotating bar with some pins where the sand leaves the trailer to ensure the sand does not clog.

This may not work perfectly, but with the cost of sand (cheap) and the amount of time or money to make a more complicated spreader fairly high, I would think simple would be better (although not nearly as much fun to build).

I did not look where you lived, but a salt spreader (like the highway crews use) would work as well (but they are $$$$)

[SPIKER]

blagladan

I don't know where you are located, but I bought a roofers gravel spreader a few years back at an auction. it is a 3 wheeled driven/motorized hopper that has a slide gate at the bottom, you adjust slide gate using a pull lever which dumps gravel onto commercial roofs. uses round 57 type stone pretty good. I don't have a use for it right now (maybe in a few months again?) maybe you are interested uses a 5 hp briggs which has gear drive to a pair of golf cart type wheels. center front mounted pivot wheel. holds maybe 1/4 yard of material. engine drives the unit at walking speed. engine was NEW when I bought it reason I got it. I never used it in last 4 yrs
it is located in ohio northern part if you are interested. not sure wherre you are

need full profile filled out.
mark M

[jeffinsgf]

You're on the road to a very nice lawn, and have received some very good advice. If you have a load of fabrication experience, building a topdresser might just work out fine. I don't, so I bought an "experienced" Turfco Mete-R-Matic on eBay and rebuilt it. It was a rusty pile of junk. I took it apart, figured out what was truly broken, wire brushed the whole thing, painted all the parts, bought what replacements I needed and put it all back together again. I now have an $8000 topdresser for a little under $2000 (counting something for my time, as well). Topdressing isn't something you do once or twice. It should be part of a continuing program of sustainable turf management. I spread composted yard waste and coarse sand on my lawn at least once a year, and twice when I can afford it. Another couple of years, and it will look like a fairway. It already (in 3 years) is the best looking yard for several miles in any direction. Topdressing has cut my lawn's fertilizer requirements by 2/3.

[BWBrown]

Years ago New Idea had an option for their manure spreaders to spread lime (nothing harder to get to flow through a spreader in my experience.)
It was basically a moldboard(?) at the rear of the box, allowing a thin horizontal exit slot, and prevented the whole load coming off with the unloader chain. The thickness of the spread pattern was adjusted with the moldboard. I will post a picture if I can find one.
Actually used one about 40 years ago - for what my memory is worth, it worked pretty well. And it would be quite simple to reproduce in any size.
Bob

[Renze]

thought of using a muck spreader, and a chain link drag for the fine spreading ?