Has anyone ever made their own swing/playground?

[NonTraditionalFeelings]

I'm currently planning to create my own playground/swing area for my kids aged 10, 7 and 5. I'm trying to work out what the best material will be to use. I'm thinking 125mm square posts. The plan would be to create a climbing wall, swing, and monkey bars with a view that these could be removed and then the frame turned into a feature in the garden.

How old are your children? We have a nest swing like the one in the first picture but it's on a metal A frame - the children are very rough with it and if you used the frame like your picture you'd need very deep footings imo.

I like the climbing frame pergola though, I guess you need to decide whether you'd want a garden structure in the same place as you'd want the climbing frame. Made of wood, what would be the life span as climbing frame? Personally, if the play equipment will be used for a good few years, I would focus on that and then decide if you can upcycle after?

Just realised you put the ages.

Your 10 year old will want to swing high enough to be above the top bar and experience that stomach churning moment as the ropes go momentarily slack - there's an awful lot of lateral force on the swing. So I don't think the swing in the picture would be useful at your ages.

You could replace the rope ladder on the climbing frame by a swing. Or you could limit their swinging by just letting them swing on the ladder. (Swinging doesn't occupy kids for more than about 15 mins at a time, and big municipal swings are more fun - that's if there are any still around, I think H&S has put paid to most of the big swings)

With treated wood, you should get a good life span - next door's is still going strong after 12 years.

I'd suggest a plastic slide for the younger kids (and in summer you can put a long plastic sheet at the bottom and pour water down it for a water slide) and some sort of platform to climb up to - the climbing frame will spend most of its life standing in for a tree-house, a pirate ship etc.

I take it you've already found out that you can buy the moulded climbing holds that you get on proper climbing walls? They come in different colours, so when kids have mastered the climb up to the platform, they can try "use the red holds only" "use a green hold and then a yellow hold in turn" for a bit more challenge.