Soft surface play area - rubber

[TheIronLady]

Has anyone done this in their garden?

I am thinking about putting down a small area for the children to play on - thinking of putting their slides and very small climbing frame on this area.
There are lots of companies out there and of course it costs a small fortune; to make it even worse, I will need a company who can come and install it too plus garden on an incline so alot of work needed to level a patch of garden for this.

Just wondered if anyone had any recommendations?

Ds has his climbing frame / slide on the grass - is there a problem with grass? Good for wildlife, no installation requirements and no worse than rubber to land on.

I bought a new 5ft slide and just thinking about safety if one of them fell off the top! not a nice thought but it could potentially happen. At least with the 'rubber' flooring, depending on the thickness, it definitely lessens any potential injury. That's the main reason.

Wanted to also create a much larger area for play and for us to use as a family so thought about putting down the safety flooring instead of concrete paving stones.

When he was little, I would be out with DS when he was on his climbing frame. Now he's 7 I'm not - but he's not fallen off that or the slide (and we started out quite carefully with how you climb things safely etc.) and neither have the two twins who are a year younger that regularly come round to play.

I certainly think that it would be better than concrete which is clearly not a good surface under play equipment - what is there at the moment?

We have rubber grass matting like you get in playgrounds, so the grass grows through it. A few kids have fallen off things and not hurt themselves. It wasn't too hard to install, though I got my hub to do it as he likes that sort of things - you just hammer big pin thiings in at the corners. got it from www.grassmats.co.uk/grassmats/grassmats-1

Says it's good for falls of up to 3m. Not sure what that means really.

Rubber matting is softer to land on than concrete. I am not convinced it is any softer than grass...

Hi I bought recreation mats from elc six years ago and as long as you put smooth side face down incase it rains as they can be slippy if not they are brill and easy to clean if you search on elc.co.uk for 122892 these are what I have and are on a 3 for2 offer

Definitely softer than grass. Imagine whacking your head on hard packed earth, versus whacking it on rubber matting. The rubber matting would take some of the impact - on grass it would all be on your head.

When I worked in the industry, we used Rospa for post-installation inspection of play equipment, advice that sort of thing. They have a useful collection of information leaflets which includes advice on wet pour, loose impact (bark, sand), grass.

Surfacing is horribly expensive and requires regular maintenance. Cost and maintenance varies from product to product so when comparing different types of surface, do look at the overall cost say over a 5 year period. Melcourt have information about bark mostly... bark needs regular maintenance and it degrades. However it can be suitable for CFH (Critical Fall Height) of up to 3.5 metres (depth of bark varies for different CFH) and isn't that complex to install - though on slope may be tricky depending on the gradient.

What is the CFH of the equipment you have? Is it 5 feet (about 1.5m)?

Fawns is a supplier who can supply various surfaces, including artificial grass (which should be cheaper than wetpour) and not need as much maintenance as loose fill.

What size of an area are you looking at? I would have thought that the most cost effective thing would be loose fill - recycled timber (Cushionfall), recycled rubber mulch (EcoScape), or play grade bark (playbark 10/50). It would need a base which could be constructed from timber edges and have a geo textile membrane (a dark coloured tiny mesh) which helps stop things growing through.

Delivery of loose fill material is cheapest via a lorry... which dumps a big of the stuff on your driveway!

Some types of loosefill can also be brought in bags but that costs more. EcoScape give some calculations for quantity needed... 24-32 kilos of rubber mulch per square metre, giving a depth of 75-100mm. A bag is about 10 kilos, so if you measure your space, you can calculate roughly how many bags.

Good grass is often perfectly fine for play equipment with CFH under 1.5m (1500mm). See this article about Grass as a safety surface.

What is Critical Fall Height? This article explains more about CFH. Put simply, it is the highest point of the play equipment that a child may fall from, measured from the child's feet to the ground below.

we have rubber chippings around our climbing frame it may be the rubber mucl that is linked above? anyway its like wood chippings but rubber, made from recycled car tyres i think, you can buy it by the bagfull, we ordered ours of the iternet, its great and has lasted for years :)

We put down recycled rubber tyres that had been chipped into play bark. It's a proper product and safe. Under it a drainage membrane to stop the plants and edged with rounded-edge wood. Downsides with bark are that the local cats will give it a go (although they've stopped now) and it will collect leaves like you would not believe.

I remember my Foundation Degree tutor telling us that research has shown that safety surfaces don't do an awful lot to keep children safer. The children learn very early on to risk assess their own play and, if the have a soft surface to fall onto, their play becomes more risky as a result.

For that reason I'm not sure that it's worth going to the expense of installing a safety surface.

We had to put down something as it was bare soil - rock hard in summer and a pond in winter - hence using it for play as nothing would grow there. Agree you can go overboard in this safety thing.

Also remember that if its the black stuff, made for tyres, it will get really hot in the sun!

the ELC mats are fab, (and tesco/asda do them too)

jude we have the black stuff made from tyres, it doesnt get hot at all have had it down for years, its great, we put a membrane under to stop plants etc growing up and then wooden edges to stop it all falling off as its on a raised bit of the garden, its really good, low maintenance, the cats dont seem to like it or poo in it as they do in bark chippings and it def doesnt get hot :)

Thanks everyone for all the replies and links. I have a lot to think about.

Garden is small to medium in size and has grass at the moment but garden on an upward slope so really awkward; ideally would like to terrace it and have children's play area on one of the (probably 3) terraces but as we can't really afford to get a landscaper in, will have to attempt it ourselves so would have liked something that didn't involve alot or preparation under the 'safety' play surface. I had thought about the rubber mulch but will continue my research! Thanks again.