Assembly by your own team or by ours: cost, risk, warranty

The unit arrives in parts with the instructions in the box. The real question is whether anyone at the school, the estate or the municipal works will dig the hole, mix the concrete and hold the post plumb until the mix stiffens.

What doing it yourself requires

Foundation dimensions, concrete class and curing time are all in the instructions, and the sequence of the work is set out in the article on the carousel foundation and installation.

How long it really takes

The hands-on part is a few hours for a competent pair. The calendar is the harder number, because the concrete has to gain strength and the unit stands out of service while it does. From the first spade to the first child, allow several days, and plan with a week in hand if the opening date is fixed.

When your own team makes sense

• A construction company or a developer with a crew already on site, where this is routine work and the plant is standing there anyway.
• A municipality with its own works department, with people, an excavator and a mixer.
• A holiday park or a farm where the owner runs the building work personally.

When it is better to book a crew

• Kindergartens, schools and housing estates, where nobody on staff does groundworks.
• Projects with a handover date in the contract and no room for a second attempt.
• Difficult ground: made-up ground, a high water table, stone.
• Several units going in at once, where they have to be set out with the safety zones kept clear of each other.

What the crew costs

We charge 2,50 zł per kilometre one way, counted from Rogowo. Enter a postcode in the delivery and assembly calculator and it gives you the figure without waiting for a quotation.

Worth comparing that against the cost of doing it yourself, which people rarely add up: two people for several hours, plant hire, materials, and the risk that something has to be redone. The last item is the one that bites, because redoing a foundation means breaking out concrete.

Warranty

Installing the unit yourself does not void anything on its own. The 2-year manufacturer warranty stops covering damage that follows from assembly against the instructions. In practice that means:

• a foundation shallower or narrower than the drawing specifies
• a unit left out of plumb, so the bearing carries load on one side
• the unit opened for use before the concrete reached strength
• fastenings tightened to the wrong torque, or not tightened at all

This is why photographs are worth the minute they take: the excavation with a tape measure in it, the anchor before the pour, the finished foundation. If a claim ever comes up, they answer the only question that matters.

The post-installation inspection

Whoever did the work, a unit on a public site is checked before it opens. That check is carried out by someone with the right technical background, independent of the installer, and it produces a record.

The independence matters on public projects, where a record in which the contractor certifies their own work tends to be questioned at handover. From there the unit moves onto the ordinary cycle of routine visual checks, functional checks every 1 to 3 months and an annual main inspection, described in the article on playground inspections.

What to check before children are let on

1. The concrete has reached the strength the instructions call for
2. The structure does not move when pushed hard at waist height
3. The unit stands plumb and the platform turns freely, without grinding
4. Every fastening is tightened and capped with its dome nut
5. Nothing hard sits inside the safety zone: no fence, bench, bollard or second unit
6. The rating plate is fixed in place and legible