Playground Rubber Surfacing Replaces Mulch That Scatters And Freezes
We replace loose fill with a poured rubber surfacing that stays exactly as deep as it was installed. Wood mulch and pea gravel migrate to the edges, go thin beneath the swings and at the bottom of the slide, and blow around the yard. Worse, in a Sudbury January the loose fill freezes into a solid block that offers no cushion at all, and it stays frozen until April.
Poured rubber surfacing stays put, keeps its depth, and never freezes into a slab, because water drains through it. The cushion under the swing in February is the same cushion that was there in July.
Playground Rubber Surfacing Depth Follows The Fall Height
We size the rubber surfacing to the tallest fall the equipment allows. A toddler climber at a daycare might need an inch and a half of rubber surfacing; a full-height school climber or a swing set may need three to four inches or more. The site visit records the equipment heights, and the quote states the thickness in inches for each zone.
The build-up is a thick cushion layer of black SBR granules, topped with a coloured layer of virgin EPDM rubber troweled over it. The colours are chosen from the EPDM range, so a school can have its own colours or a game board poured into the surface.
Greater Sudbury Has More Than Two Hundred Playgrounds And Many School Yards
We pour rubber surfacing for municipal parks, for schools run by the Rainbow and Sudbury Catholic boards and the two French boards, for daycares and for churches from Capreol to Lively. Many of those yards are still on mulch, and the ones that have moved to poured rubber surfacing are the ones that stay open and usable through the shoulder seasons.
Backyard playgrounds get the same treatment. A home play structure in Val Caron or the South End can sit on a small pad of coloured rubber surfacing that drains, cushions and does not track mulch into the house.
A playground rubber surfacing install starts with a compacted stone base, an existing slab or old rubber surfacing, and primes it. The SBR cushion layer is mixed and troweled to depth, then the EPDM wear layer is poured over it in the chosen colours, and the whole surface cures before anyone climbs on it. Edges are contained so nothing crumbles, and drainage is checked so water leaves through the rubber rather than pooling under it.
A splash pad or a school courtyard is poured the same way, and commercial surfacing covers the walkways that connect them.