Greater Safety In Playgrounds With Rubber Playground Tiles
Many of us grew up playing in playgrounds as children. It was a different time then and in the summer you could play unsupervised from sunup to sundown, taking breaks only to grab a cool drink of water from a garden hose. Things are much different these days and another of the changes in playground safety in general.
Nowadays over 80% of public playgrounds have some sort of protective surface around the equipment. Backyard playground are much different – only about 9% of home backyard playgrounds have any sort of protective surfaces, and most have only grass or dirt.
According to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) this leads to over 69% of the 50,000 yearly injuries in a backyard playground. These are mostly injuries that could be prevented by using some form of playground tiles or other protective surface.
There are many types of surfaces you can use to help protect your children. Sand isn’t recommended because kids can track it all over and remove it from the equipment area as well as get it in their eyes. Wood mulch is better but constant maintenance and replenishment of the mulch is needed, otherwise low areas / bald spots occur where kids can get injured.
Rubber mulch or rubber pellets are much better in terms of cushioning and protection, however these have the same problems as sand or wood mulch – they too can get tracked away from the equipment or hazard area.
Probably the best protective surface to use is rubber playground tiles, also known as playground mats. Rubber playground tiles are great because you can get many different thicknesses, from 1″ to 4 1/4″. This is great because the CPSC has a statistic called the “Critical Height of Playground Equipment”, which is the highest point that kids can get to on any piece of playground equipment. Once you know the critical height, you can figure out the thickness of playground tiles or mulch that’s needed for that area.
The rubber playground tiles also have holes on the bottom of them so that they fit on just about any surface. You can get different colors of tiles to fit the color scheme of the playground or make nice designs. They’re also environmentally friendly and made out of recycled rubber. They have interlocking edges so they’re easy to install and the rubber material is breathable and resistant to damage. However, in the event that some tiles do get damaged or worn out, you can simply replace that tile or section of tiles. When assembling the tiles, a small amount of strong adhesive is used to connect them, that way kids can’t pry them apart. Water dries on them quickly because the water doesn’t pool up. Lastly these rubber tiles can be purchased in bright, primary colors that many kids love.
This sort of protective surfacing can greatly cut down on the amount of scrapes, cuts, bruises and even the nastier injuries like broken bones and concussions. For these reasons and many more, you should check into safety playground tiles for your public or backyard playground!
