Standards for safety surfacing on playgrounds
Playground safety is given particularly high priority. After all, toddlers as well as children of kindergarten and primary school age should be able to frolic, climb, swing, teeter or slide around safely and unscathed. In the past 40 years, a large number of standards has been developed in the area of playground planning and construction to ensure safe play in playgrounds.
An important aspect here is the safety surfacing. Especially when falling or jumping from play devices, be it a swing, climbing frame or rope course, the nature of the ground must be adapted to the fall height in order to avoid life-threatening injuries. Since there are different types of safety surfacing on playgrounds, each surface has its own criteria, but there are also general requirements that all surfaces must fulfil. The requirements which safety surfacing in playgrounds should meet in terms of their structure and properties are regulated in specified standards. In Germany, two standards are decisive in this regard, i.e. standards DIN EN 1176 and DIN EN 1177.
The DIN standards are developed in a special working committee with a panel of experts and adopted by consensus. The whole process is under the leadership of the European Committee for standardisation or the German Institute for Standardisation. Once the standards have been approved, they are published by a specialist publisher as reference works subject to a charge. Each standard is reviewed every five years to determine whether amendments are necessary.
DIN EN 1176
Standard DIN EN 1176 "Playground equipment and surfacing" specifies requirements for compliance with safety standards for playground equipment and installations in public playgrounds, including safety checks, regular inspections and maintenance. This standard series provides playground operators with clear specifications on how playground equipment and surfaces must be designed, installed and inspected in order to ensure children's safety and minimise the risk of injury. This standard consists of seven parts. Part 1 defines the ‘general safety requirements and test methods’.
Among other things, it deals with the requirements for the materials used to produce playground equipment and surfaces, such as wood, synthetic materials or metal. It also provides general information on important safety-related topics, such as trapping points, wear parts, chains and ropes, fall protection and, of course, safety surfacing. The standard begins by defining the two important factors of ‘fall height’ (the height from which a child may fall while playing) and ‘fall distance’ (the area around the fall location on which the playing child can theoretically land after the fall).
Then, various fall protection materials (bark mulch, wood chips, sand/gravel) are listed and it is noted how these must be designed to be sufficient for a certain fall height (2m or 3m). In addition to the impact attenuating surfaces of bark mulch, wood chips and sand/gravel, other impact attenuating materials (such as synthetic surfaces) are also permitted if they meet the tests and requirements of standard DIN EN 1177. Furthermore, standard DIN EN 1176 contains details about which information must be provided by manufacturers, requirements for the inspection and maintenance of impact attenuating surfaces. Parts 2-7 of the standard deal with specific types of play equipment (such as swings, slides) and their regular inspections.
DIN EN 1177
Standard DIN EN 1177 about “impact attenuating playground surfacing - Test methods to determine impact attenuation”, specifies the test structure and the test procedure for determining the impact attenuation of safety surfacing by measuring the acceleration that occurs on impacting.
The test basically determines the permissible critical fall height for the impact attenuating safety surfacing material that is being tested or, rather, establishes at what installation thickness the maximum permissible fall height of 3 m is achieved. Standard DIN EN 1177 describes in detail both the structure and the testing process, and defines the necessary formulas and calculations.
While standard DIN EN 1176 provides specific requirements and guidelines for safety surfacing, DIN EN 1177 describes a standardised testing procedure that can be used to verify compliance with the requirements.
ServicesHave your products tested.
We at ISP GmbH – Institut für Sportstättenprüfung will check your safety-surfacing and other safety-related materials in accordance with the requirements of DIN EN 1176, either in our certified laboratory and on-site at your playground. The safety of playgrounds is of utmost importance to us, which is why we approach playground safety with utmost care and expertise.
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We will be happy to advise you on the procedure and background to testing safety surfacing.
Safety surfacing
| HIC-Measurements | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| DIN EN 1177 | Minimum installation thickness |
| ASTM F 1292 | Technical properties |
| Protective function |