Sparta Rotterdam is watering its pitch from below with Draintalent
We visited Sparta Rotterdam on one of the hottest days of the year to talk with Dave Muis from Dutch sports company DrainTalent.
It was a fitting day to talk about solving climate challenges in sports.
The pitch is being re-built from artificial to natural grass, with the inclusion of DrainTalent's technology, that's extracting water from the surface when it rains and watering the pitch from below when its dry. And this in turn promises to be a circular and sustainable solution for grass pitches.
Here's what Dave had to say...
Hi Dave, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role with DrainTalent?
My name is Dave Muis and I’m the Sales Manager of DrainTalent for the Netherlands and Belgium.
I work for TurfTalents which is tied to DrainTalent and is an advisory company for pitch turfs. We work with football clubs but also municipalities and our goal is to be working on all sorts of projects in various sports.
A fun fact is that I was born and raised on a golf course, so turf management is really part of my DNA.
We’re here today at Sparta Rotterdam. So naturally, the question is why?
Well, because DrainTalent is going to be watering their pitch from below the ground! It’s wild to think about isn’t it?
This Christmas Sparta decided to give their supporters an eagerly awaited present and make the change from artificial to a natural grass pitch. It’s a step back to how they started, but also one towards the future of their stadium.
When the acquisition for this project started we approached the club with the proposition that we can do this with sustainability at the core. Our co-founder and co-developer of the system Arno Harmsen is also involved with GrasMeesters who have taken the lead on this project.
Since we are connected with GrasMeesters, we could provide pitch support. Sparta already knew of our work from two training pitches that have DrainTalent installed in 2020 and the choice to implement it on their main ground was a natural progression of our work together.
So how does it work? What does DrainTalent’s system do?
The DrainTalent system is a sports technical system for field maintenance with which you can provide the field with water from below. And you can also drain water at high forced speed from the field itself to be stored. So, in brief it extracts water from the field, stores it in a tank, and then waters the field from below.
In the Netherlands we have a lot of rainfall and wet periods which hampers play. With our system it allows clubs to extract that water rapidly whilst also aerating the soil and opening up its porous volume.
In 2022 and for a while now we’ve known that climate issues also need solutions in sports. It's our responsibility to work on it within our industry too. With DrainTalent we water the field from below, which makes the use of over ground sprinklers redundant.
Besides this, the DrainTalent system also increases the quality and safety of the grass and provides more playing hours as a standard natural grass field. This is a big win for the sustainability but also the clubs, players, fans, and anyone using the pitch.
“On a hot day about 35% of the water is lost when using traditional irrigation. And we’re changing that. Here at Sparta we use DrainTalent in a circular way by storing water from rain and then reusing it to water the field from below with the least possible loss incurred.”
We are here talking on one of the hottest days of the year, which indicates that we need to be looking at our consumption and use of water. It’s nice to have natural grass pitches but we also have to do it in a sustainable and circular way to make it make sense for our future in sports.
So, we give credit to the municipalities and forward thinking clubs we’ve been working with to solve this global challenge together.
It’s a hot day indeed! Which makes me come back to the ‘urban water buffer’ you mentioned earlier when we were walking around. What’s that about?
Well, the stadium square which lies near the stadium has the system set up. They store the water from the square and the roof surface of the stadium in a reservoir under the ground.
This water then passes through a plant filtration system and is stored in another fresh water reservoir under the Cryuff court which exists near the stadium. The water is then used to irrigate the pitch. In the past with artificial grass they used about 15 thousand cubic meters of drinking water.
The drawback is that once this water was used to water the pitch, it was lost to the sewer system. With DrainTalent now coming in, we work together with this system to improve its savings of water.
We trap the water that would otherwise be lost to the sewer system by literally draining the field. We then can use this to water the field from below, or send it from our expansion tank to the tank under the Cryuff courts.
The circle was closed, so to say. This makes both Sparta and the Municipality of Rotterdam really happy as we’re helping them make this urban water buffer system function smarter.
Do you have a message for other partners looking to make these changes to their pitches?
Everyone’s welcome to join us and co-create solutions for climate challenges!
We have to be very aware of what’s happening in our world and partners who have the same outlook are great connections for us. The possibilities of our solution can help them meet climate goals and also play a part in creating the change we need.
“Sports as an industry can also be a contributing factor towards solving global challenges and in order to do it, we need to start with conversations and thought leaders willing to take the leap with us.”
When clubs are building new stadiums or renovating fields, I would invite them to consider us and what we have to offer. Artificial systems in my opinion are outmatched by natural grass. They involve rubber and plastic and are not as renewable as they claim to be. And traditional systems of irrigation with a lot of wastage are not the answer either.
I believe where we come in allows clubs to have natural grass and do it in a smart and sustainable way. The future of sports pitches is definitely grass. Let’s save and reuse as much water as we can when playing on them.
SportsNL has the goal to connect change-makers and thought leaders working on projects like this. Do you think a company like DrainTalent benefits from it?
Certainly! We would love to connect with more people working on sustainability and circular solutions within sports.
I think missions and events with the chance to network supported by SportsNL will allow us to make meaningful connections. Think about the possibilities of combining so many different cutting-edge technologies being developed and deployed in the Netherlands.
And we’re not just looking at professional clubs but also at all levels of play and leagues. We would also like to implement this across cities in parks and fields. We want to connect with private as well as public institutions who are dedicated to change.
If anyone is interested to learn more about how our system works, they can reach out to us through our website. I’m sure we can find ways to work together, so let’s start talking.