Lining up for bunker liners: Polylast Bunker Liner exhibits at GIS

Superintendents looking for new ways to line bunkers can view an innovative solution on the GIS trade show floor, the Polylast Bunker Liner, made out of 100-percent recycled rubber and proprietary urethanes.

According to Polylast’s Pete Laurence, the company has a patented process of encapsulating recycled rubber with a pretreatment of chemicals that when bound with urethane becomes extremely strong, “stronger than almost anything else.”

Polylast improves water flow to drain systems in bunkers, Laurence says, to prevent flooding and washout while protecting sand from migrating rocks and dirt from the native subsurface.

The prefabricated liner is delivered ready to install, and requires only the placement of the preformed pads. The seams can be stapled or glued together.

“We pre-form the pads, which are three-eighths of an inch think, at our facility and ship them,” he says. “Installation is done by picking up a pad or a roll, laying it in the bunker, butting the edges, and some people like to use staples, some don’t, then using a binder to seal the edges. The beauty of that is that you can line a bunker or do all your bunkers. You can follow the last golfer through so you don’t have to shut your course down, and three men can do a 1,000-foot bunker in an hour.”

Reaction to the product in the market has been overwhelming, Laurence says, and he notes that he had spent the previous evening figuring out how he can fabricate material in the amount needed to satisfy the people who have visited his booth.