Navigating Playground Surfacing Options
By: Tom Norquist

With the return of children to school, it’s extremely important for school leaders to assess the fitness of their playground facilities and, if needed, perform maintenance and upgrades to the equipment and surfacing. It should become a habit to perform maintenance activities in the fall and spring to ensure consistency.

Often, it’s the playground equipment that gets the initial attention. Sliding boards, swings, bridges, and climbing walls can show obvious signs of wear and tear. These all need to be reviewed and repaired to make sure that the equipment is not damaged or dangerous.

However, the most common threat of noncompliance on playgrounds is right under our feet – the surfacing. Playground surfacing is also victim to weather and wear and tear, and some surfaces need constant maintenance to ensure safety. More than 80 percent of injuries on playgrounds occur from falls, and installation and proper maintenance of a quality surface material can help minimize this risk of injury.

Kids today can have very different experiences on the playground than many of us did as children. Many of us played on asphalt because conventional wisdom at the time was that it was softer than concrete. Surfaces such as asphalt, concrete, and even grass have been eliminated on today’s playgrounds. New, impact-attenuating surface materials on playgrounds are the result of extensive research to determine the best ways to prevent life-threatening injuries from falls while maintaining universal functionality.

A Brief History
In the mid-to late 1970s, playground owners began moving away from the old surfacing and began installing uniform rubber mats and experimenting with “loose fill” surfacing, which was spread around and under playground equipment. During this transition period, unfortunately, loose-fill surfaces such as sand, pea gravel, wood chips and garden mulch were thought to be adequate shock-absorbing materials. Unfortunately, all of these surfaces had inherent major flaws that made them unsuitable and unsafe for playground surfaces.

The shift to impact-attenuating surfaces such as Engineered Wood Fiber, rubber tiles, and Poured-in-Place (PIP) led to a remarkable reduction in life-debilitating playground injuries. As the safety benefits of this surfacing became known, the material gained popularity. Kids enjoyed the soft cushioning and experimented in their play because of it. For example, children were not likely to jump from high surfaces on a playground with asphalt or concrete underneath, but with soft surfacing, they felt more comfortable with height and jumping.

In 1991, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) revised their Handbook for Public Playground Safety to include types of surfacing and their respective fall heights. “Fall height” refers to a critical height value of at least the height of the highest designated play surface on the equipment.

In addition, the playground industry understood that playground surfacing added much more to a playground than just a surface for kids to play on. Playground surfacing provides play value to children – and can be used to enhance a child’s play experience. For example, rubberized tiles and poured-in-place surfacing can be spread in creative ways, with colorful, fantasy designs, such as rivers and oceans, jungles and forests and can even provide life-sized playing boards for various games.

Equal thought and effort needs to be put into decisions about playground surfacing as is playground equipment. Some of the best, most creative playgrounds in the world feature a variety of equipment, natural elements, and different types of surfacing that allow for both maximum creativity and safety.

Types of Surfacing
There are several types of modern playground surfacing you’re likely to see on playgrounds today:

Engineered Wood Fiber
Engineered wood fiber (EWF) is manufactured from natural wood that is often surplus cut-offs, a part of the lumber manufacturing process. It is non-toxic and does not contain chemicals or artificial ingredients. EWF can be virgin or recycled wood. EWF is scientifically manufactured to meet the demanding criteria of the ASTM F2075 Standard.

Poured-in-Place
Poured-in-place (PIP) surfacing is made from rubber granules, urethane, and recycled tire buffings that are mixed and installed on site. Generally, PIP consists of a cushion layer of resilient rubber that is bound together with a top wear course. The wear course is typically made from a durable and colorful rubber or can be a synthetic turf grass-like material.

Rubber Mulch
Rubber mulch consists of granular rubber particles, also referred to as rubber chunks, nuggets, and shredded rubber. It is largely made from recycled tire rubber that is cleaned and often colored.

Rubber Tiles
Rubber tiles consist of granular rubber particles that are cleaned and formed together into a uniform tile. They are non-toxic and are primarily made from recycled rubber tiles.

The biggest mistake in the modern playground is that attention is not paid to the surfacing and it’s an afterthought. Too often, there are very tall playground structures towering over a surface of sand or pea gravel, which does not afford adequate impact attenuation for the fall heights of the equipment. Further, neither sand nor pea gravel meet American with Disabilities (ADA) requirements for accessibility.

Other times, there are wood chips and mulch that are made from a municipality’s wood chipper and dispersed under a playground – it may offer some attenuation, but generally has not been tested and can decompose rapidly and can give a false sense of security.

This article is courtesy of the International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association, www.ipema.org.