Cool, you have yours in the garage with tiles already. My thought is to key in on the turf material you are looking for to cover the floor. You want a quality product that has some weight to it and lays nice. From your earlier post it sounded like you wanted the entire area covered and then just drop in an insert of some sort to hit shots off. You should use the tiles you have and just buy a turf material like I mentioned that has the 5mm foam on the back of it. The foam plus the thin secondary backing, plus the pile height of the turf add up to a dimension of around a 5/8" or so. Then you add in the height of the tiles you have. Depending on the depth of the hitting insert you use, you may or may not need to add a material to the concrete where your insert goes to get it to flush up with the top of the built up putting green coverage. As long as your tiles are the firm EVA foam type, you should be able to stand on top of them (plus the putting green turf) with no problem. It will look slick to have the whole area covered and then just an insert for hitting off. I have a sample of the PL306 and it is really good quality turf. Depending on the height of your tiles, you may not need it with the 5mm foam backing on it. Not sure they make it without the backing, but there are certainly turf products that are the equivalent or better without the foam backing. I have seen a couple of professional sim installs that have turf with the foam backing, and then layered on top of EVA foam tiles. They are firm to stand on, you just need to make sure the tiles are firm and that the turf you buy has a nice low pile for putting. Again, I don't see the need to go the route of Dricore or the other system. Even if you use Dricore on top of cement, you are going to need a turf with a bit of cushion to go on top of it. It will need a heavy rubber action backing or something like the 5mm foam on the PL306. If not, balls coming off the screen will likely have a hollow thud sound to them when they hit the turf (because of wood surface on the Dricore), and the turf will be too firm when you are standing on it. Consider that most driving range mats have 5/8" black foam as the base, and they are not too soft to stand on. What is soft to stand on is turf that is thick and bulky like the CCE turf. I would not want anything like that turf to cover a large area, and it would be expensive.
Hope this helps. There is more than one way to do this, and I just know that the right tiles and turf would do the trick real nice. And, you could always add a full depth cup by having a hole saw cut into the concrete. Just keep the core that comes out and you can patch it back in later. I had a pro do the cuts in my basement. Didn't feel comfortable renting a saw and going DIY on that one!
Hope this helps. There is more than one way to do this, and I just know that the right tiles and turf would do the trick real nice. And, you could always add a full depth cup by having a hole saw cut into the concrete. Just keep the core that comes out and you can patch it back in later. I had a pro do the cuts in my basement. Didn't feel comfortable renting a saw and going DIY on that one!
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