How to remove grease and oil from artificial grass: absorb, degrease, blot, rinse

• The grill. Drippings through the grate and the grease tray overflowing. The spot is directly under and a foot behind the grill.
• Fryer and cookout oil. A tipped pan or a turkey fryer, which puts a gallon down at once.
• Sunscreen and tanning oil on turf beside a pool, which shows as a dull, slightly sticky patch by midsummer.
• A leak. A mower or pressure washer parked on the side-yard turf, a bike chain, a car on a turf strip beside the driveway.
• The dog. Skin oil where a dog lies every afternoon in the shade, which builds into a grey ring over a season.

1. Do not wet it. Water does not mix with oil; it floats the oil across the turf.
2. Absorb. Cover the spot generously with baking soda, cornstarch or plain clay cat litter and leave it fifteen minutes. The powder wicks oil up out of the fibers. Sweep or blow it up, and if it came up dark, do it again.
3. Degrease. Mix a strong dish-soap solution, about three tablespoons per gallon of warm tap water, or use a degreaser labeled for synthetic surfaces and turf. Apply to the spot and an inch beyond.
4. Dwell five to ten minutes. The surfactant surrounds the oil so it will let go of the fiber.
5. Blot. Press clean rags straight down onto the spot and lift. The rag comes up greasy; that is the oil leaving. Keep blotting with fresh rags until they come up clean.
6. Rinse with warm tap water from the hose, from the high side, until there are no suds at the low edge.
7. Brush against the grain once dry.

A spot that has been there for weeks is darker and holds dirt, and the oil has migrated down the fibers into the infill. The method is the same with two changes. Skip the absorbent, which does nothing on oil that has already soaked in, and run the degrease-dwell-blot cycle two or three times, letting the turf dry between rounds so you can see what is left. Part the fibers after the last round; if the sand underneath is dark and greasy, the infill in that spot is contaminated and needs replacing rather than cleaning, which is a small job for us and a frustrating one at home.

• Hosing first. Floats the oil across the turf into a bigger, thinner stain.
• Scrubbing hard. Drives oil down into the infill. Soft brush, light hand, or just blot.
• Kettle-hot water. Polyethylene fibers deform well below boiling and the backing does not like it either. Warm from the tap is the limit.
• Solvents. Mineral spirits and citrus degreasers dissolve grease and soften the fiber, leaving a dull patch. The DIY mistakes guide has the full list.
• A pressure washer. Blows greasy infill across the yard.
• Leaving the absorbent on overnight. Dew turns baking soda into paste in the infill. Fifteen minutes and up. The baking soda page covers that.

A grill mat, the kind sold for decks, under the grill and a foot behind it ends the grill problem. Pull the mower off the turf. Rinse the pool-side turf with mild soap once a month in summer while the sunscreen is still fresh, using the mix on the dish soap page. And a dog's afternoon spot is worth a monthly wash before it becomes a ring.

A fresh drip is a fifteen-minute job. A season of grill drippings that has gone dark, a fryer spill, or a grease ring with contaminated infill under it is a deep stain treatment with a high-volume rinse and, where needed, the infill in the spot extracted and replaced. That is our stain removal at $75 to $150 as an add-on, or inside a Premium Restoration from $299 for up to 500 square feet. A grill that has actually melted the fibers is a different problem, covered on the burn marks page.