Ronald Conard, CGCS said: How cost effective is it period?
We have made our own green sand for two years and have had generally good results. While the answer is it's not cost effective in the literal sense, it's one of those little things that goes a long way with our owner, GM, and membership. The nice part of the deal was it allowed us to buy a 9 cubic foot concrete mixer that under normal circumstances we would have never been able to purchase. We now use to mixer for a lot of other projects around the golf course so I will say that there is certainly some value in making that purchase.
As you mentioned, we only use it on the golf course (tees and fairways) and just use regular divot mix on the range tees. This method works well for us and the powers-that-be. On average we use about 3 tons per month April through September. As far as mixing and storing, we cut a 300 gallon fertilizer tote in half horizontally with a reciprocating saw and bolted a pallet to the top side of the tote. This way we could move both tubs around our shop pretty easily with loader forks. One guy can mix and fill the two tubs in two hours. It ends up that we mix sand two to three times per month depending on play, events, etc. Green paint is around $50/gallon and we'll go through a little under two gallons per month.
So for about $1,000 a year, including labor and materials, we get a piece of equipment that we would not normally have and can make the important people happy.
I hope this helps.