When a new soccer complex opened recently in the town of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, the first to score was not a player on any of the eight fields, or the new hotel, business park or residents of the apartment complex. It was Advanced Erosion Solutions (AES), an erosion control contractor tasked with applying growth medium along the rights-of-way, curb-to- sidewalks, the shale slopes overlooking the complex and other bare dirt areas to encourage the growth of grasses and flowers to control erosion and add to the overall aesthetics. Chris Van Tyle, the owner of AES, Brian Troutman and other crew members worked efficiently to get the project ready for the opening.
The area was prepped using a bulldozer to powderize the dirt on the slopes and fill in any cracks. Before, the shale had been hard and flaky. Now, the surface was looser and better able to support the hydro-mulch matrix. The AES team delivered a supply truck with eight pallets of Flexterra Bonded Fiber Matrix (BFM) on a Friday afternoon.
The crew began at 8 a.m. on a Saturday with three Bowie Imperial 3000-gallon hydromulchers and eight men to operate them. The 8-acre site had two sections which were flat enough that a truck could be driven onto them, while the third had a 2:1 slope that required the BFM to be hose-applied at a rate of 3,500 pounds of Flexterra per acre. They tackled the steepest slope first, running 200 feet of hose up from
the Bowie. Two of the crew steadied the hose on the ground while a third operated the nozzle at the end of the hose.
“We had three men on a hose coming off the truck on that first slope area because...you could barely stand on it, let alone pull the hose along with it,” Troutman said.
Five of the eight acres were 2:1 slopes, which were over sprayed with the canon after the slopes were hosed with three-man crews. Everything was over- shot with the tower to eliminate the ghosting effect.
“It takes roughly 20 minutes to empty the truck with the canon, almost faster than you can get refilled,” Troutman said.
For the tower work, three people loaded the top of the empty truck with bales while three more were loading the mixture into the tank. The crew
sprayed material on the slope both above and below the truck, with one person atop the hydromulcher directing the nozzle spray.
After finishing the most difficult area, the crew tackled the other two flatter ledges. Using the tower nozzle, the crew laid down 3,000 pounds per acre
of BFM in two applications. Three different seed mixtures were used around the complex, including
a Tall Fescue, a low mow for the areas not to be maintained and a custom slope mix designed for the application.
Overall, “we ran 15 truckloads of BFM that day,” Troutman said, and Bowie handled it all without a hitch.
“I’d say we shot a little over seven acres that day,” said Chris Van Tyle. “We went back and shot two tanks to finish it on Sunday afternoon.”
He credits Bowie’s centrifugal pump which efficiently handles thick, viscous BFM and long distances. That and the rugged design are what attracted them to Bowie initially, and why they have been using them since 2011.
“They’re simple to run. They’re easy to work on. They don’t have a whole gluttony of proprietary items,” Van Tyle said.
Bowie Industries
800.433.0934 | www.bowieindustries.com.
