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Outdoor Play Equipment Safety

When choosing play equipment for your children to use in the garden at home one of your main concerns should be safety and how to prevent accidents from happening that could result in injury to your child. There are of course a number of toys such as a cubby house that wont really need any thought to how safe they are as they tend to be positioned on the ground and dont have many moving parts so the risks are very minimal. But for the most part the following advice can be applied to all types of outdoor play equipment to you are considering to buy for you kids at home.

 

When considering a wooden play structure for the home such as climbing frames or swing sets you will need to ensure that the item has a guarantee of 10 years as a minimum and that is covers insect infection and rot. On a similar note fungal infection can also be a problem and buying timber that has been pressure treated with the correct chemicals should help to prevent this. Generally any wooden structure that you are buying for your kids should be solid, go for climbing frames with substantial timber sections and make sure that the wood is finished without any sharp edges and that nuts and bolts are recessed.

 

Checking over the equipment regularly is also important, check for instability and parts that are going to perish or rust. Positioning the apparatus in the correct position will also help to keep your kids safe, swings will need about 2.5 meter of clearance both back and front. To prevent your kids from gaining access to undesirable areas, climbing frames and trampolines should be positioned carefully with at least 3 meters of clearance around them to prevent further climbing opportunities . Finally, make sure you lay down some ground rules for your children and make it very clear that if they break the rules they won’t be able to play on the equipment.