For many people, backyard lawns are their weekend escape plan, because most of them are stressed in work and other affairs throughout the week. If you have a wonderful lawn attached to your home, you are blessed. Keep it well and you will never regret it and your kids will always be grateful to you for that. When you have the opportunity and can make someone’s life better, do it. Decide and act without hesitation. And you will be glad about what you did in your old days, believe me, my wise mentor once told me that but he isn’t with me now and I bet, he is doing lectures in heavens above, and I miss him very much. Read well everyone 😊
1. Recommended Type
A. Mason Sand / All Purpose Sand:
- The correct material for anything that mainly requires a surface of evenness, and can be used in numerous applications like masonries, landscaping and concreting. And the sand is well washed, clean and comparatively small grained. It can be smooth and uniform in texture, unlike the grittier types of sand, mason’s sand has been screened to remove impurities.
- Fine textures make the sand applicable throughout in uses that require fineness and cleanliness, for example as a leveling agent under pavers or as mortar mixes for laying bricks and blocks. The sand composition consists of stone particles such as finer quartz, granite or limestone pieces in most of the cases. It can be easily bonded with gravel or cement, hence an essential component for building or beautifying the outdoors.
- Known for using in paver base and leveling because its fine grains are quick to fill the gaps, giving surface underneath the pavers a smooth finish, flagstones or some other landscaping materials and the potential for compaction and leveling capacity of Mason’s sand at this top range make them an excellent choice for bringing stability and durability to outdoor spaces.
- To prevent shifting and weed growth, Mason’s sand is also used in paver joints and because it provides very tight packing, even after substantial traffic or harsh weather exposure, the pavers stay well in place for quite a long period of time without much displacement. And due to these reasons builders around the globe highly recommend Mason’s sand for lawns or if you are planning a new patio or walkway.
- The sand in the garden acts as an amendment for enhancing drainage, preventing soil packing and to avoid stagnation. If you mix Mason sand and garden soil, it will offer a loose, airy environment that replenishes and conducive to good root growth and water passage and it works best specifically in garden beds with low to poor drainage or heavy clay-like soil conditions. The sand widely used in sandbox fills for children’s play areas and it is ideal for a secure and convenient play area for children in your yard or garden.
B. Washed Construction Sand:
- Washed thoroughly to remove dust, clay, salt and silt and they are mainly classified according to the size of their granules as coarse, medium, fine and ultra-fine.
- It is a type and usually mined from the ground and washed from there and screened to remove fine silt and other contaminants. By mixing it with cement and water, the sand is mainly used for asphalt and concrete applications and is made into actual concrete. Before any finishing touches are applied, if the mixture is done once, it becomes ready to be poured and smoothened.
- Asphalt is heated well to remove excess moisture prior to being applied along or mixed with crushed stone and coated with asphalt and is made in exactly the same process explained above.
C. Silica Sand:
- The sand is made up mainly of Silicon Dioxide (SiO2), a chemically inert and comparatively hard material and also known as quartz sand, white sand or industrial sand and mainly has two elements, which are silica and oxygen. The quartz is often white or colorless and the sand probably has different color schemes largely because of the variety of minerals and rock detritus that usually make up the resources. The sand should qualify as silica sand only when it contains at least 95% SiO2 and less than 0.6% iron oxide, otherwise the sand will be considered as regular sand.
- For natural and synthetic sports fields, the silica is used and also in the cases of bunkers and greens on golf courses as well. When you are playing eighteen, those sand traps you find yourself stuck in a way too often are usually full of silica sand. Because of its ability to support drainage and natural plant growth, it is also used to maintain greens and fairways. In the cases of turf fields, the main structural component of an uncontaminated filtration media, the silica sand is being used most of the time.
- Since the sand won’t degrade while exposed to acidic chemicals, it is commonly used in water filtration, even if it’s processing well water or filtering tap water. Silica sand is an effective filtration bed that consistently removes contaminants from water, because of its uniform shape and size.
2. Sand to Avoid
A. Play Sand:
- Because the play sand is not appropriate for lawn care, we should also understand how it is made and other things about it as well. For making play sand, some specific processes are followed and the sand is uniform, foreign objects are not mixed in and dust and other contaminants are removed carefully. The ideal sand is low-dust or dust free and compared to regular sand the play sand contains a much finer and smaller particle size. The methods of cleaning the playground sand is explained below:
- Sifting: The method of removing debris and foreign or unnecessary objects from sand, usually the best method and helps determine what is mostly in play sand. For smaller sand pits, a colander can be a helpful tool but in the case of a larger playground, the only tool which works is, sand sifter and the tool will help you clean the sand without having to replace all the sand there.
- Bleach Method: This could undoubtedly be one of the effective methods and bleach kills 99.9% of germs and other harmful organisms because it’s a main disinfectant. To use it properly, fetch one gallon of regular household bleach and a bottle for spraying. And don’t forget to wear something effective for not getting bleach stains on you.
- Vinegar Method: An effective alternative to bleaching and the ascetic acid is an efficient disinfectant with many deep uses. For sanitizing the playground, all you need is a gallon of pure distilled white vinegar and a large pump sprayer jug.
B. Coarse Sand:
- The sand is suitable for reinforced concrete structures and it holds the highest strength compared to medium and fine sand. The main reason being the differences of particle sizes and they have different fineness modulus and different gradations and all that is in accordance with the perspectives of building materials theory.
- For large volume concrete, the coarse sand is suitable and it is cheaper as well compared to medium and fine sand. The coarse sand has crack resistance but also it has high mud content and its fineness modulus is 3.7 to 3.1, and the average particle size is 0.5 mm or above.
C. Beach Sand:
- It is a mineral rich sand because it has mineral grain mixtures from a variety of sources and it can vary continentally. The species of carbonate producing organisms, depends on the geology of the source rocks or as mentioned before, in the cases of bioclastic materials as well, the mineral type and grain sizes can vary very much.
- Like igneous rocks, the unconsolidated coastal and nearshore deposits and the major terrigenous sediment sources such as sandstone and limestone, with same mineral composition, every intrusive rock has an extrusive counterpart of volcanic origin, as an example, rhyolite.
- By becoming sorted according to their size and density; the heaviness, local hydraulic, wave-induced processes may then cause enrichment of peculiar and particular grain sizes or particle types. Not so long past or in recent decades, the tendency to nourish eroding natural beaches is increasing and even in the cases of creating completely artificial beaches which serve a peculiar anthropogenic needs and wishes are getting increased as well.