The Most Important Factors in Picking Out New Flooring
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For your home, do not choose a cheap material that will need constant replacement because you couldn’t afford the more expensive alternative. It is far better to buy once and have it last for several years than buying multiple cheap surfaces over a short period of time.
The second most important factor in an outdoor play surface is safety. For this reason, rubber mulch would not be considered an appropriate surfacing material for most jungle gyms or playgrounds because it isn’t really all that soft. Rubber can actually be too soft to protect children from injury in many circumstances. Crumb rubber does not absorb shock well at all and can lead to serious injuries for anyone landing on it after falling from a jungle gym, slide, or teeter-totter.
This leaves us with three options for an outdoor play surface that you can feel good about:
standard wood mulch, recycled rubber mulch, and modular interlocking tiles.
Wood chips are the most common material used for playground surfacing for several reasons. People are familiar with it, it’s easy to install by amateurs, and it looks nice. One downside is that wood mulch can hold moisture which makes the ground very muddy. It is also difficult to find non-treated wood chips that are safe play surfaces, so you may have to settle for using cedar or other cedars in your playground.
Recycled rubber is a more expensive option for outdoor play surfaces, but it offers significant advantages over wood mulch and other materials. Rubber is softer than wood, so it absorbs the force of falls much better, which can help to prevent injuries from falls off jungle gym equipment or slides. It also doesn’t decay or become muddy, so it’s easier to maintain. The cost of installing a recycled rubber play surface is about the same as using wood mulch.
Interlocking tiles are more expensive than either wood chips or recycled rubber mulch, but they offer some significant advantages that make them worth considering for your outdoor play area. Interlocking tiles can actually be installed at a lower cost than using mulch or rubber. They are safer than other flooring materials for several reasons. The individual tiles are thick enough that they won’t break if someone falls on them, so it’s less likely that anyone will get injured even with higher impact activities like jumping off of jungle gym equipment. Tiles have an even, flat surface that is easy to clean and doesn’t absorb water. It’s also possible to install a tile floor going up a hill or around objects like trees or jungle gym equipment which isn’t really feasible with other materials.
The only downside of interlocking tiles compared to wood mulch or recycled rubber is the aesthetic factor. As long as you have a flat, open area in your playpark for the tiles to go, there shouldn’t be any issues.