The history of airter®
The revolution in professional lawn care –
World’s best pneumatic soil aeration & loosening machine!
Milestones
Milestones on the road to pneumatic loosening of intensively used lawns
- First projects on pneumatic loosening of soils used for plant cultivation in the 1920s.
- Testing of various single lance devices for loosening tree slices in the 1980s.
- Development of devices with several injection lances in order to loosen larger areas at the end of the 1990s. Loosening effect, increase in the proportion of air-filled pores, improved infiltration rate and improved root growth proven.
- To this day, only discontinuously working devices have been used with the exclusive use of compressed air for loosening.
- The innovative, continuously operating airter® machine for purely pneumatic loosening of intensively used lawns and hybrid lawn systems was launched in spring 2016 (airter®).
(Source: Morhard, J., 2015: Potentials of pneumatic loosening processes in the context of soil maintenance for intensively used lawns. Annual Conference Fördererkreis Landschafts- und Sportplatzbauliche Forschung e.V., July 2015, Berlin)
Bundesliga-Roadshow
The presentation of the airter® Duplex 26170 at seven Bundesliga locations was a great success.
A report from the STADIONWELT INSIDE 2/2016. On 18 April 2016 the Bundesliga roadshow of the airter® Duplex 26170 started in Paderborn. The pneumatic soil aeration device for professionals developed by the Swiss company Novoter AG loosens the root zone and supplies it with fresh oxygen. The experts have been convinced of the functionality of this world novelty on the stadium lawns of SC Paderborn, VfB Stuttgart, Schalke 04, Bayer Leverkusen and the 1. FC Cologne as well as on the training areas of Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig.
The first public demonstrations of the airter® attracted more than a hundred visitors. Many prominent experts attended the demonstration along with representatives of the German Lawn Society, members of the Association for the Promotion of Landscape and Sports Turf Research to numerous Bundesliga Greenkeepers. All major sports turf construction and maintenance companies were on site too.
Hybrid lawn base layer loosened
Not only the experts were impressed by the new machine, but also the most important users of the football pitches. During the roadshow, the airter® was used to loosen and ventilate a training pitch of a first division team with a hard hybrid grass base layer. The players of this club all expressed themselves very positively afterwards about the soft underground.
Novoter AG originally developed the airter® Duplex 26170 as a maintenance device for the innovative lawn heating system novoter® marketed by the company, which can save 70 to 80 % of heating costs compared to conventional lawn heating systems. During the development process, it became clear that the pneumatic loosening technology and the continuous working process were also ideally suited for sports surfaces without heating, be it football pitches or golf courses. The airter® has massive advantages over conventional aeration machines, particularly in loosening the turf root zone of hybrid lawn carpets and hybrid lawn base layers.
Scientific studies
At the Institute of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Hohenheim near Stuttgart, Novokraft AG was commissioned to carry out extensive laboratory and field tests to optimise the airter® technology. The study at the University of Hohenheim showed the following results:
- Proven loosening of the lawn base layer up to 30%.
- Laboratory results confirmed real on-site field test results
Investigation on the occasion of the Roadshow 2016
In spring 2016, the University of Hohenheim accompanied the demonstrations of the airter® on all five lawns of the participating league clubs in order to investigate the effect of the machine even more closely in practical tests.
Under the direction of Dr. Jörg Morhard, scientific measurements of soil compaction and soil loosening in the lawn base layer were carried out before and after the airter® has worked. Soil samples
as well as soil moisture measurements were also part of these investigations.
The first tendency of the evaluated data showed that the soil is loosened homogeneously and area-wide. The final results will be published by the University of Hohenheim at a later date.
Penetrometer puncture holes (before/after)
Field test measurements with penetrometer
