Me again needing info on membrane!

Funny how the word gets round when you are looking to buy stuff! I got a phone call from someone offering me a huge roll of stuff called Lotrak 1800 at less than half it's retail price which is well over £200. (No it's not nicked! person had a change of plans re laying a pathway). The roll is 4.5x 100 but the person said they'd cut it in half to make handling easier and lighter! I have had a look on the net and the stuff seems to be made more for the building/constrction industry and is used to seperate soil from the like of type 1. It's really strong but I'm not sure if it would let rainwater through well enough. Certainly it will last a long time and at the price I'm being offered it, it would be cheaper than some membrane I've already got on order. Has anybody ever used a similar product of roughly the same spec? I would use it to cover over a bed with Rhododendron and Azaleas both of which need plenty water so don't want them to suffer for the sake of keeping weeds down. This is the website but it's a bit technical for me to decide if the stuff will be ok for the job of just supressing weeds http://www.donlow.co.uk/

 

Hi Silu had a google and came up with this link,http://www.donlow.com/product-details/wovens/8/11/52
It mentions water permeability so it must allow water through, if it didn`t all our highways would be lakes as the water couldn`t escape. We need some of our techies to have a look

 

Thanks Pam, agree it will let water through but no sure if it will let enough through. Mind you with the amount of rainfall we get I'd think it would be fine. Hopefully someone way more knowledgeable than me will be able to advise yea or ney.

 

I've had experience of Terram geotextile membranes, used under road/car parking sub-bases to prevent loss of aggregate (the soil report was incorrect and it was added as a variation), but generally under paving as a weed barrier plus as a lining to tree pits in car parks as a root barrier, but never known it to be used as a weed suppressant membrane on the surface of the ground. Where edges of Terram have been near the surface (for paths it was specified that it be turned up the inner face of timber path edgings) it would quickly be worn ragged where exposed.

 

I've used geotextile membrane in place of woven weed suppressing membrane and its been useless. It has torn, over time, and weeds have happily grown on it (or rather in the bark on top of it) and got rooted into it such that they are much more difficult to separate than with the woven membrane.

I bought the geotextile at half the price of woven, so I suspect that the price you are being quoted is probably on a par with a decent discount you could get readily (i.e. if it is 50% of the best price of woven that you have found).

Others may have had different results, but personally I would stick to woven.

Or carpet, if you can get that cheap and are on a tight budget

 

Thanks for all the help and info. I decided to say thanks but no thanks and will keep to using stuff which is made for the job. Even if what I've bought gives me a year of little weeds in the area "membraned" that will mean I can then attack other areas which have gone wild!