The
new head groundsman at Forest Green Rovers FC, Matt Rainey, has
praised Etesia's ETMower claiming that it is like having an extra
member of staff.
Forest
Green Rovers FC, based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, is striving to
become the most sustainable football club in the world and has
already taken measurable steps to ensure this happens: The club is
the proud owner of the world's first organic football pitch, solar
power is installed on the stadium roof, every drop of water is
recycled via a water harvesting system and the team kit is even
washed in phosphate-free washing powder.
As
you can imagine – keeping Co2 emissions at an absolute minimum is
extremely important to a club like Forest Green Rovers, and this is
where Etesia's ETMower comes in.
The
state-of-the-art robotic mower, which is also used by Bayern Munich
FC in Germany, considerably reduces the cost of pitch maintenance,
not only in terms of labour and maintenance costs, but also by
cutting energy bills. Co2 emissions are also much lower than
conventional powered petrol/diesel mowers and Matt believes that the
machine, who he affectionately calls "˜Mow', perfectly fits within
the club's philosophy.
"Mow
costs us absolutely nothing to use because it simply charges from the
solar panels on the roof of the stadium. Energy consumption is kept
to a minimum and there's no fuel or noise to deal with which is a
lot better for the environment.
"It
also mulches the grass so it means that Mow is putting all the
goodness of the grass back into the soil. It ticks every box that we
adhere to at the club."
Matt,
who originally started his career at the club, re-joined Forest Green
Rovers in July this year and that was when he was first introduced to
the ETMower. His relationship with "˜Mow' got off to the best
possible start when he realised that the powerful robotic mower would
play a key role in his pre-season preparations.
"Because
of "˜Mow's' weight, you can cut much earlier in the season
compared with any other piece of machinery – potentially up to
fourteen days earlier.
"After
the pitch has been seeded, you'd normally have to wait until the
grass is 40-45mm before physically going onto the pitch with rotary
mowers but with "˜Mow' you can put him on at 20mm. It's great
because it speeds things up, establishes the roots, and it can work
in conditions that you can't. I can't work in torrential rain for
example but "˜Mow' can."
As
Matt says, the ETMower can work constantly for 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week and 365 days a year in most weather conditions. Once the area
to be covered has been marked out by a low voltage peripheral cable
buried in the ground, the ETmower gets to work automatically,
according to your programming. No human intervention is required,
meaning that groundsmen like Matt have more time to focus on other
important tasks.
"Mow
is a great tool to have in the shed because it can do things that
groundsmen can't. He also significantly frees up my time. At Forest
Green Rovers, we focus on our soil biology so our aeration programme
is a lot more intense than others are. Feeding regimes are organic so
we are always applying something and then there is the stadium
maintenance as well. We've also got an outside remit which involves
attending to the growth of wildflowers. For a club at our level the
ETMower is my extra man – "˜Mow' is my assistant and he never
complains either!"
While
"˜Mow' may not complain, the ETMower does however send you and SMS
text message to let you know of any incident it may encounter
indicating exactly what the problem is. Also, if it needs to recharge
its batteries, it automatically goes to its charging station and
resumes mowing once it is fully charged.
There
are three models in the range - the ETm44 for work up to 5,000m²,
ETm65 for work up to 9,000m² and the ETm105 for work up to 20,000m².
For
further information, please contact Etesia UK on 01295 680120 or
visit www.etesia.co.uk
For
more news, reviews and insightful views, you can follow Etesia UK on
Twitter @EtesiaUK and like the company's Facebook page –
www.facebook.com/EtesiaUK. You can also view the latest Etesia videos
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