3 Things Quietly Putting Your Playground at Risk

This is your biweekly dose of playground knowledge from someone who’s spent 20 years inspecting them.

This time around, we’ll be talking about why a lack of maintenance records can void your playground warranty, and how to make sure you’re covered when something breaks.

I’ll also break down how a playground’s layout can turn it into a racetrack, and share one quick fall chore that keeps your surfacing doing its job.

All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.

The design of a playground is just as important, if not more so, than the equipment itself. Laying out a space in a way that minimizes injury risk can be a tough balancing act, but ultimately, it will lead to fewer headaches and safer kids at play.

On the other hand, there are a high-traffic playgrounds designed in such a way that kids will attempt to sprint from one place to another. These tend to create an environment where kids will run into each other or even trip over their shoelaces, causing minor injuries at best, and hospital visits at worst.

This diagram provides two examples of playground layouts: one with less-than-ideal traffic flow, and the other featuring more than enough space for kids to move around:

Oftentimes, these aren’t deliberate design decisions. And it’s entirely possible to have a playground that, on paper, is compliant with ASTM, ADA, etc., yet still laid out in a way that’s potentially dangerous.

One thing I encourage customers to do is to look at an overhead, 2D rendering of their proposed playground, which provides a birds-eye view of their space. From there, it’s easy to see potential spacing issues, as well as paths on which a kid could run too fast unimpeded.

With fall leaves across the country papering over the ground, now is as good a time as ever to rake your loose-fill surfacing. Whether it’s rubber or wood mulch, your surfacing is the first line of defense against fall-related injuries, so having even depth at every point on the playground helps keep kids safe.

Even a slight divot or dip in playground surfacing can cause a kid to trip and potentially hurt themselves, so be sure to rake carefully and smooth out any unevenness.

When you’re in the buying stage of your playground purchase, you’ll likely hear your manufacturer talk about the warranty they include with every purchase. Selling points like “1-3 year coverage on moving parts” or “100 year coverage on posts” are common, and they’re designed to make you, the customer, feel at ease before you ultimately make the purchase. They also serve the practical purpose of rectifying genuine manufacturer error.

However, what’s often overlooked, in my experience, is that lack of proper maintenance will void just about any playground warranty.

So, let’s say you purchased a swing set a couple years ago; one day, you notice that one of the posts has a large crack in it.

In this case, you’d think that calling the manufacturer, making a warranty claim, and getting your swing set fixed for free would be fairly straightforward. But you’ll likely be asked to show that lack of maintenance wasn’t at fault for the malfunction.

How do you show this? One surefire way is through detailed inspection records. By sending the manufacturer documentation regarding your playground’s past inspections and audits (most of them, ideally, performed by a CPSI), you can say with confidence that you did everything in your power to keep your swing set in good working order.

In short, keeping detailed inspection records will help you save time and money in the event you ever have to make a warranty claim on your equipment. Playground manufacturer errors happen, and being able to prove that the failure in question is a warranty-covered defect is a must if you want to make a successful claim.

If you’re looking to purchase a playground, ask yourself:

These are the sorts of questions that sometimes prove necessary to make playground plans come to life.

If you have any questions on how to get your playground to the finish line, reply to this email and I’ll give you my take.

A playground is a big purchase, and when it comes to completing a project, there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

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Talk soon,

Nic Breedlove

Certified Playground Safety Inspector

20 years in the game. Still learning.