Round, cross or disc carousel: which one to choose

Three questions settle this choice faster than any catalogue: how many children are meant to use it at once, how old they are, and who will be sweeping the site in autumn.

Comparison

Karuzela Kołowa Trzmiel, the round carousel

A platform with a handrail all the way round and a centre post with a steering wheel. Children can sit on the seats or stand holding the rail, so in practice more of them fit on than on the other two types. The 200 kg capacity is the highest in our range.

It suits sites that take a lot of children at once: municipal playgrounds, holiday resorts in season, larger housing estates. The rail doubles as a barrier, so younger children have something solid to hold on to.

The downsides: it takes the most ground and costs about a thousand zloty more than the other two.

Karuzela Krzyżowa, the cross carousel

Four seats set crosswise on a low frame. A child gets on and off without climbing, which matters with three year olds. Four defined places also mean that a supervisor in a kindergarten can see at a glance how many children are on the unit, which is the real reason it ends up in fenced gardens rather than open sites.

The drawback few people think about before buying: in autumn leaves blow in between the seats and have to be raked out. On a site under trees that is a quarter of an hour a week.

It is also the one type in the range described for ages 3 to 12 rather than 3 to 14. That is not a weaker structure but arithmetic: four twelve year olds already come close to the 160 kg limit, and there is no fifth seat.

Karuzela Tarczowa, the disc carousel

A round platform of perforated sheet steel, handrails, nothing else. Water goes through the holes and so do leaves, so the unit is usable straight after rain and needs no clearing in autumn. The perforated surface is non slip as a side effect, and it heats up less in full sun than a smooth sheet would.

This is the one that most often goes onto open municipal and village sites, because nobody walks round those every day checking whether something needs sweeping off.

If the budget stretches to two units

A carousel plus a Huśtawka Ważka, the seesaw, usually works out better than two carousels. The reason is practical: a carousel takes several children at once and creates a queue, and the seesaw takes the two youngest out of that queue. Two units of the same type split the queue in half but do nothing about the fact that younger children need something different from ten year olds.

That pair is the combination ordered from us most often, and it is not a coincidence.

What the type of unit does not decide

The safety zone is 2 metres on every side whichever carousel you choose. The foundation has to be concreted in for all of them. An EN 1176 certificate and the full set of documents comes with each one. The differences described above are about use, not about paperwork. How the zone is measured, and what must not stand inside it, is set out in the piece on the playground safety zone.

Nor does the type decide how many children can ride at once. That comes from the rated capacity and the number of places, and the two limits run out at different points depending on the age group. The arithmetic is in the piece on carousel load capacity.

All three are built from galvanised steel, powder coated, which is what decides how they look after a few winters. The comparison with timber equipment is in the piece on steel or timber playgrounds.