The amount you lose varies from bag to bag. You will also notice most of the finer stuff is near the bottom of the bag. You are doing fine and you do not need to work so hard. I can go through a 50 lb bag in 20 min or less.

Sometimes life smiles at you, and you may have lucked out with a good bag! As long as it was turface "MVP" or "Allsport", sounds good...

Are you using aluminum or fiberglass insect screen? The fiberglass screen has thicker strands which means smaller holes. You want to use aluminum screen so that more of the smaller particles are allowed to pass through.

Also, I think many of the people losing around half of their Turface (like myself) are using something coarser than insect screen which is probably unnecessary in most cases.

-Chris

I average about 1/4 of the bag lost to "fines". As mentioned, you'll feel like you're doing great, until you get to the bottom, where the small stuff is. Then you feel like 95% of it is lost.

Joe

I usually lose around 1/5, maybe 1/4.

Al

Thanks for the responses everyone! I am using aluminum screen. I guess I must have just gotten lucky with a good bag because even at the bottom it didn't seem all that dusty!

Thanks again!
Kristopher

Since I had to order my turface on the internet. I had not very much of it. The bark was 1/4 size from a good orchid place, the turface was 1/4 and so was the granite. I can't see any point in losing some of the turface because it gets ground into powder from the screening. It worked out great for me anyway. I was a bit heavier on the bark, due to a lack of the turface and granite, but the plants still look good and they are not sitting there wet. I checked and they are draining out. So, I don't think one needs to screen it. If the plant is a super fussy plant and ultra expensive maybe, but these were just test plants. They need good, but not excellent drainage.