Protect the Ground Beneath You

Match the mat to the load

Ground protection matting works by spreading weight over a larger area so the ground underneath survives. How much weight decides everything else.

• Pedestrian and light duty boards and PVC mats handle foot traffic, barrows and light equipment. For events, walkways and keeping mud off a route.
• Medium duty access mats around 12mm take vans, small plant and repeated foot traffic across grass and soft ground.
• Heavy duty access mats at 15mm and up carry larger plant and vehicles, and are what a working access route across a field needs.
• Ultra heavy duty trackway handles tracked plant and sustained loading.

Buying light and hoping is the expensive error. An underspecified mat cracks under the first machine, and then you have a broken mat and damaged ground.

Connectors turn mats into a road

Individual mats move. A vehicle turning on loose mats slides them apart and drops a wheel into the gap, which is how both the mat and the ground get damaged.

Two-way and four-way connectors bolt adjacent mats together so the run behaves as one surface. On any route a vehicle uses, particularly where it turns, connectors are not an accessory. Pegs do the same job on grass matting, holding the run down until the grass grows through it.

Anti-slip matters more than people expect

A smooth mat on wet grass, or wet mud on a smooth mat, is slippery in both directions.

Anti-slip PVC and rubber pedestrian mats carry a textured surface, which is the specification to look for anywhere the public or a workforce walks. The pattern also sheds mud rather than packing it, so the grip lasts through the day rather than the first hour.

Spaghetti and open matting drain and let debris fall through, which is why they suit entrances and welfare routes.

Protecting what is underneath

The point of matting on turf, sports pitches and landscaped areas is that it protects the root zone as well as the surface.

Ground compaction is the damage that does not show until weeks later, when the grass fails to recover along the line a vehicle took. Mats spread the pressure so the soil structure is not crushed, and on any site where the ground has to look right afterwards, that is the reason they earn their cost.

Lift mats reasonably promptly. Grass under a mat for a long spell yellows off and needs time to come back.

Handling and storage

Full size mats are heavy and awkward, which is why half-size versions exist and why stillages do. A stillage keeps a set together, protects the mats between jobs and makes them liftable rather than dragged.

Clean mats before stacking. Dried mud is what makes the next set impossible to separate.

For indoor and workplace matting, see workplace matting.