Soft Maintenance on red clay (without removing the white stripes)

Estimated time: 45/60 minutes

Time to restart playing: 1 hour after maintenance

Playground conditions: hard surface

Quantity of clay on the court: homogeneous over the whole field without the need for clay's additions

White stripes: not be removed but only cleaned at the end of maintenance with a special brush (if necessary you can compact them with a no gear compactor roller for tennis courts)

Season: type of maintenance for all periods of the year to be carried out even once a month to ensure perfect ball bounces and controlled players sliding

Ground conditions: not too wet (if clay surface is too dry, add some water with pipe half an hour before making maintenance with Venus)

Application: Indoor and Outdoor

Direction line indicator: to run along the white lines without passing over them with the venus blades
Direction line indicator: to run along the white lines without passing over them with the venus blades
Direction line indicator: to run along the white lines without passing over them with the venus blades

Preliminary measures:

clean the lines before and after maintenance to make sure that there are none out of place (if necessary compact white stripes with a light no gear roll). Be carefull and never cross the lines with Venus blades: run along the longitudinal lines following the directional blu rod of the machine on the right side of the chassis to the right of the Venus rotor. The risk of damaging the stripes with a soft machine depth adjustament is minimal, but it is always better not to deteriorate them!)

Machine adjustment:

machine set up devices machine set up devices
depth adjustment: position n.° 2 depth adjustment: position n.° 2
speed control: push the engine speed control on a medium level speed control: push the engine speed control on a medium level

Final operations:

once the first step has been completed, evaluate whether to make another one crossing the grinded surface with the same setting of the machine but turning 90° the direction of Venus action, perhaps slowing the rotor speed to a minimum setting (accelerator lever as in the photo)

If a second milling will be necessary, adjust engine speed as shown in the photo If a second milling will be necessary, adjust engine speed as shown in the photo

The use of the roller (no gear or motorized depending on which one is available) is usually not necessary to recompact the clay surface after ordinary maintenance of this kind, unless a double cross milled has been done, it is better to act with a light roller to recover the correct surface granulometry.

In this video you can clearly see the operator crossing the white stripes. Pay attention please: he lifts softly the blades to not touch the stripes.

Andrea Paoloni during a demonstration in Prague (Czechoslovakia) with the local dealer and guests from the major tennis clubs in the capital