Inspection Direction Correction: How to Ensure Your Playground Stays Safe

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

In this issue, I’ll discuss a reader question about playground inspections and how long their results are useful for.

I’ll also give a brief dive into how diesel fuel prices could affect the price of playground equipment in the coming months.

All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.

I’ve written at length about the importance of playground inspections, which are the best, most reliable way of keeping your playground as safe as it can be. A few weeks ago, I got a question from a reader in which they asked, simply, “How long are inspections useful for?”

As in many areas of life, the answer is: it depends.

For high-traffic playgrounds that serve 100 or more kids per day, one could make the case that daily inspections are needed to fully catalog the state of one’s playground. For less busy areas, weekly inspections should do the trick.

But, to more fully answer the question posed by the reader, inspections are only as useful as the consistent rate at which they’re conducted. For instance, if you know your playground only has about 25-50 kids playing on it per day, performing a single inspection will help identify problematic areas. However, that one inspection needs to part of an overall inspection schedule (ideally at least one per week) in order to truly be effective at minimizing injury risk.

So, if you don’t already have a consistent schedule for your playground inspections, there’s never been a better time than the present to create one.

As the end of the calendar year approaches and fewer and fewer kids venture onto the playground, it’s a good time to take inventory of what your playground needs. When you think of bare playground necessities, things like surfacing probably come to mind, but just as important are border timbers.

Surfacing is only useful as long as it’s kept in one confined area, and borders help do exactly that. So if you’re thinking of expanding your current playground or building a new one in the upcoming year, don’t skimp on timbers. They’ll save you money on loose-fill surfacing and ensure that everyone knows exactly where the playground ends and begins.

Over the past three months, the average price of diesel fuel has jumped nearly 40%. While this is unwelcome news to those who drive certain pickup trucks, it’s even more concerning for businesses that utilize semis to get their product from place to place.

In the months following the start of the Iran War, several playground companies implemented fuel surcharges to offset the increasing cost of diesel, and with the cost per gallon moving even further upward, I think it’s safe to say that these extra fees aren’t going anywhere, at least in the near future.

That said, some in the playground and recreation business have simply hiked their overall product prices to help cancel out the extra cost of fuel. Companies bake these costs into their business plans, so it’s safe to assume that, in the coming months, more and more will move towards attaching extra fees or increasing the cost of certain equipment.

So, if you live in a warmer region like the Southwest and you’re in the market for a new playground this winter, it’s worth considering whether you need it right now or whether it can wait until the spring months when diesel will hopefully have a more reasonable per-gallon cost.

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.