Thinking about doing this in our garden for a play area. Has anyone done similar and learnt anything from their build? How did you prep the area? We will be doing it on an existing lawn so interested to hear if people stripped lawn off or dug down or sanded the area to improve drainage or used some form of weed suppressant membrane? Cheers

Yep we did. No special prep as we’re on well drained soil so I just laid weed suppression fabric onto the grass and then had play bark tipped onto it. The whole thing was enclosed with half-round planks which went about 12-15″ high (3 x planks I think it was).

Total area was about 20sqm – cost a lot for the bark as I remember. Make sure you get the right stuff – play bark is squidgy so softer to fall on than wood chip which compacts down and can be quite hard.

After about 6 years the grass got back through (and the girls stopped using the swings/slide) so I just pulled up the fabric and let the bark get absorbed back into the soil, took the fence away and that was another part of our lives over 🙁

My brother did and regretted it. It attracted swarms of flies and every cat in the area used it as a toilet. A friend used the shredded rubber and that seems much better. No flies but the cats still use it as a toilet.

When we did this – took up turf + scraped top soil away/down – depth depending on ‘fall height’ 4″-8″. Then used heavy duty weed suppressant fabric – with easy push plastic holding pins( from plastics by post). Timber frame to keep it in.
Our local forestry – sold us a lorry load of ‘play bark’ so no splinters.
– Lots of ‘fun’ moving the mountain into the back garden.
+ It mulches down every couple of years so needs topping up and weeds pulling out.

Didn’t use sand for drainage – the black birds love it and voles like to tunnel through it too.

+1 about the local cats loving it. Kind of ruined it for us so we ended up taking all the bark back up.

This is better if the area’s grass at present… when the end of life has been reached, lift it and no work needed to get the grass back to normal.

http://www.rubberco.co.uk/selectedsize/Rubber-Grass-Playground-Mats/662?gclid=Cj0KEQjwwpm3BRDuh5awn4qJpLwBEiQAATTAQd9tKM457fF1hY90DT2-bkbdS9ct36eVFMLR-aYl_OoaAuIb8P8HAQ#fo_c=961&fo_k=5db91ad9650e7c03806b695550c07e42&fo_s=gplauk

We did this a couple of years ago when we re-did the garden and decided to buy rubber bark. It’s more expensive, but it doesn’t rot or mulch down and the cats don’t like using it to poop in. It’s also bouncy for when you fall out of the trampoline enclusure after spin jumping with the kids 🙂

We got ours from here: Terrasofta.co.uk. We enclosed the area with sleepers and laid membrane underneath. From memory, they will send out samples so you can check the colour before you buy.

Yep, layer of geotextile then rubber bark. The stuff we have is made from shredded car tyres. Sleepers around the edge to keep it in.

Before you do this there is actually safe different thinking about why you are doing it. It is not actually safer, and in some cases can be more harmful. What you are doing is giving an outdoor soft area, when most of the rest of the world is not soft. When the kids play, especially if they ar small, there is less energy to absorb so they learn that falling off stuff is dangerous and can hurt, but not too bad. If it is not risky then they can take bigger risks ( higher climb/jump/fall) and the risks are bigger I am not saying that you deliberately hurt your kids, but that they learn to play and they also learn what risk is. If they do not do this then then fail to learn about a key lesson: falling off stuff can hurt. If it is grass then it hurts more sometimes than others, if it is dry or wet, etc.

Grass is also self mending, looks good and generally not a place where cats/foxes/rodents want to poo and live. It also costs less as well. Just a thought.

😐

I did, but got sick of clearing up/kids treading in cat shit! Our cat btw. Took it up and laid fake grass last year, much better now.

Consider your neighbours and don’t make it too high. Next door made one and unintentionally produced a platform where their kids would just stand and watch us instead of playing…