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How do you make a safe playground? When it comes to playground installation, soft playgrounds are safe playgrounds. To make a safe playground, always start with a rubber playground surface. Modern technology has significantly improved playground safety standards. Nowadays, many public playgrounds have safety mats for kids covering their entire surfaces—making them soft playgrounds. In fact, it’s practically necessary to have safety matting for play areas. After all, accidental falls have potentially disastrous consequences. Thus, when doing playground installation, one of your first concerns should be the playground’s flooring.
“Eco-Safety 3-inch” Rubber Playground Tiles
What is the Spongy Material on Playgrounds?
You may have wondered to yourself, “What is the spongy material on playgrounds?” The spongy material on playgrounds is rubber. Outdoor rubber safety mats for play areas are the ideal play-area surface. While you may see this surfacing at your children’s schools or at your local park, you can actually bring this DIY rubber playground surface home. Well, not literally. But since playground safety-surfacing is widely available and highly affordable, soft playgrounds can now be built in your own backyard. Not only is this surfacing easy to install; thanks to the Internet, companies like Rubber-Cal are sharing their expertise on topics like outdoor rubber flooring for playgrounds, helping you come up with the best backyard play-area ideas and making playground installation easier.
How Thick Should Playground Mats Be?
Playground mats should be at least 2.5 inches thick because, with this thickness, most soft playgrounds can adequately cushion the impact of a fall from heights of up to six feet. Rubber-Cal’s Eco-Safety Tiles are designed specifically with playground safety in mind. These tiles are 2.5 inches thick and are fall-height rated to prevent serious injuries when a person falls from heights of up to six feet. Therefore, if you’re doing playground installation, pay attention to how thick your mats are.
“Eco-Sport 1-inch” Interlocking Rubber Flooring Tiles
- This rubber surfacing can be permanently installed using adhesive glue
- Great for use as gym flooring, flooring for a basement, outdoor deck surfacing, playground surfacing, trade show floors, and more
- Ramps available upon request. The sloped ramps are great for use as safe entry points and are useful for getting wheeled equipment onto the mats
Surface Protection: Since these rubber floor tiles are 1″ thick, each outdoor tile is perfect for protecting the base surfacing of an area. Heavy objects and/or a high volume of foot traffic can damage surfaces like wood. By installing this durable rubber surfacing, you are essentially adding a barrier between your area’s base surfacing and outside stresses like treadmills or sofas.
DIY Flooring: Another feature that makes these recycled mats so popular is their ease of installation. It makes a great do-it-yourself project, saving you the unwanted additional expenses of hiring third party installers. Each outdoor tile comes with pre-drilled holes on each side. These holes are meant for special connector pins (sold separately) that hold each tile firmly together. The beauty of interlocking floor tiles lies in their easy to install nature. Save yourself some extra time and money with these rubber floor tiles!
Do You Install a Soft Play-Area?
To install a soft play-area, use rubber padding for playgrounds. Soft playgrounds begin with soft playground safety mats. Rubber outdoor playground mats are also DIY-friendly; this is for multiple reasons. Because companies like Rubber-Cal typically produce their playground pads as playground tiles, rubber floors for playgrounds can be DIY-installed according to the exact measurements your project entails. Soft playgrounds are so DIY-friendly because a residential playground ground cover, if made of rubber, requires minimal technical knowledge to install yourself. Furthermore, making soft playgrounds is very affordable because companies like Rubber-Cal are making their soft play-surfaces using recycled rubber, thereby reducing the average playground rubber flooring price. Again, your question—how do you install a soft play-area? Follow our guide below on how to make soft playgrounds:
1. Location: Decide on where you would like your playground to be situated. Clear the area of any debris to make sure you have as leveled and clean a surface as possible before you get to work.
2. One Tile at a Time: Begin with an edge piece or a tile in the corner because starting with the area’s perimeter will help you visualize how the rest of the project will unfold. As you can imagine, starting in the center of the area can quickly get chaotic.
3. Make a Connection: Push your connector pins into the holes located on the side of the Eco-Safety Tile. On each side of every tile, there are four holes. Insert a connector pin into each one of these holes. Then, using the holes of a second tile, connect the second tile to the pins you’ve just inserted into the first tile. You can do this step of our playground installation guide by hand. But if you want extra security, gently tap the tile you’ve just inserted with a rubber mallet.
4. Design as You Please: Rubber floor mats for kids, like Rubber-Cal’s Eco-Safety tiles, are available in several colors: black, coal, blue, green, and terracotta. Because they all utilize the same method of connection—connector pins—you can order multiple colors and bind them together as you please. Like the order of a deck of cards, there are a virtually endless number of potential combinations. So, do what’s pleasing to you. Soft playgrounds can be beautiful, too.
Playground Slide Landing Mats
- Traction Qualities: The surface texture of the rubber mats makes for a slip-resistant surface that will help reduce trips and falls and kids land on the mat.
- Increased Safety: The rubber surface reduces the uneven ground surface that may have developed due to wear and increase safety by evening out the ground level.
- Ground Wear Protection: The 5mm thick rubber playground slide mat is the ideal gauge to added a layer of wear surface above your playground surface.
- Increase Visibility: The added floor surface is in the playground is a visual guide for the landing area if the slide. Other foot-traffic is made aware of this and this should dissuade entering the path of the slide.
Inexpensive Floor Protection:
A rubber mat for bottom of a slide is an ideal way to protect playground floors. Playground slides mats are a useful tool in maintaining the lustre of a playground and adding life to heavy impact and traffic areas under playground slides. Wear by abrasion will cause erosion over time. In a playground play areas will wear from repeated impact and contact. This form of wear is caused by contact between shoes and playground floor material. Since the landing area of a slide is immovable, the surface around the landing location will always suffer more damage and ear than other parts of a playground. If a playground’s floor surface is made from rubber tiles, pour-in-place rubber or turf, this abrasive wear will cause a loss of material by the passage of hard shoes over the surface. The damage to playground flooring can be expensive and pre-empting the damage by using a rubber mat for the playground slide’s landing surface that will protect your investment.
6. Trim Your Leftovers: It’s sometimes the case that there’s some excess tiling that extends beyond your desired surface area. If so, the solution is simple: Cut away the excess rubber using a standard utility knife. Try your best to cut in singular motions. The tiles are thick, so you may have to slice through one piece multiple times. Since rubber has a high coefficient of friction, you may find it difficult to smoothly cut across the tile. In that case, dip your blade into a soapy solution, which lubricates the rubber as you cut it. Remember to use gloves throughout this entire step of our playground installation guide.
7. Attach Ramps to the Perimeter: After you’ve finished installing your playground flooring tiles, remember to connect the Eco-Safety ramps to the exposed edges of the outer tiles. Using connector pins, attach the ramp pieces to these edges. Again, you may use a rubber mallet if it’s necessary.
8. Voila: Your play-area surface is done! You now have access to soft playgrounds in your own backyard. Playground installation has never seemed easier.
How Do You Make a Safe Playground?
Remember, soft playgrounds are safe playgrounds. To make a safe playground, start with safety mats for play areas. We hope that our guide has helped you in your playground installation process. All those tips and tricks will prove to be crucial accessories in your toolkit. In case you need to ask again: How thick should playground mats be? 2.5 inches is the average thickness for playground safety matting. At that thickness, a playset mat can comfortably cushion a fall from heights of up to six feet. Just make sure your playground padding for backyard safety is fall-height rated, too. Rubber playground flooring tiles are the best outdoor play-mats for toddlers and kids. Thus, when it comes to playground installation, rubber outdoor play-mats for playgrounds are essential to soft playgrounds. After you’ve finished building your personal playground, don’t forget to take some time to marvel at the majesty of your play-area floor. We’re sure it looks great!
