Parenting

Mulch for your outdoor playset?

If it was a DIY job, what are you using it to contain it?

If you have the rubber stuff, how many inches did you decide to go with?

TIA! 

Re: Mulch for your outdoor playset?

  • We have the rubber stuff.  It is a couple inches deep.  We contained it with that plastic landscaping edging. 

    I don't like it.  It is hard to get leaves and stuff out of it so it ends up looking messy all the time. 

    .
  • Really?  Would you have gone with the wooden stuff if you could do it over?  Do you have a problem with bugs?  Thanks!
  • Loading the player...
  • We haven't mulched the play area yet, but DH did build a sand box. He used some type of wood (like 4X4's or 2X2's not sure). He just dug down enough for them to be level with the ground and then attached them together. I would assume this could be done with the mulch.

    I'm not sure how far down to go with the mulch. 6 inches? A foot? 

  • I think 5 inches is recommended, but it's the sellers who are recommending that ;o)  My nephew broke his collar bone on the playground at school, where there is no mulch, so we decided we'd better finally get around to it.
  • We have the wood stuff in the rest of our yard and haven't had an issue with bugs. 

    I wish we'd just used the same wood mulch that we used in the rest of the yard.  But our play stuff isn't very high. 

    .
  • We haven't done anything yet because we're still deciding on its final resting place in the yard.  I'm not sure what we'll ultimately do...

    Here is a helpful site to help you determine the depth you need.  It is dependent upon the height of the platform.

    https://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/323.HTML

     

    Lilypie Kids Birthday tickersLilypie Fourth Birthday tickers
  • We were actually thinking of putting down the continuous rubber stuff. Not sure what it's called, but one of our playgrounds here has it. Am I making any sense?

    I am curious what dande would have done differently.

  • We have wood chips that aren't contained at the moment.  We plan on getting some landscaping timbers to hold it in.

    We would have loved to do the rubber, but it was far too much money.  The wood chips were free. 

  • Joe built a wood box around our playscape area.

    Basically take long 2X6 and "notch" the ends....so that they fit together like Lincoln Logs.  Then use huge screws (like railroad tie ones) to secure them.  He continued around that way until it fit all the way around.  He's handy like that though!  :)

    Not sure how deep our mulch is but we used wood mulch.  I wanted the rubber stuff but damn, it would have cost more for that (being 3" deep) than it would have for the damn playscape (I'm talking around $3k just for the mulch).

    Since Joe gets our tree mulch free, we just used that.  We add a bit more each year.  No bug issues at all.  Kids have to wear shoes....that's probably the most annoying part (although they tend to not even care and walk on it anyway....it hurts my Princess feet though!  LOL!)  :)

  • We used the same shredded bark mulch for the play area, that we use in the rest of the yard.  It is soft, but can kind of stick to clothes.  No bugs with it though and it is about 4 inches deep.  It is contained by a fence on 2 sides and then by the black rubber/plastic landscape edging on the 3rd side.
  • We have the rubber stuff, and put some type of barrier around to hold it mostly in. I can't remember what it's called. We didn't go very deep. We actually bought rubber horse stall matt (Farm & Fleet I think) to go under the swings and the end of the slide and then covered it all with maybe 1" of mulch. DH mainly wanted the mulch so he didn't have to worry about mowing around the swingset. We have the small one from Step 2.

    ETA: Here are the mats. They're kind of a soft rubber like under the rubber play grounds.

    This is the swingset we have. It's not that big, and we still ended up needing a lot of rubber mulch. We didn't even go as far around the whole set as was recommended.

    Annalise Marie 05.29.06
    Charlotte Ella 07.16.10
    Emmeline Grace 03.27.13
This discussion has been closed.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards
"
"