Playground safety zone: how much ground a carousel needs

A carousel measuring 150 × 150 cm needs a plot of 550 × 550 cm. That is over 30 square metres for a unit that occupies less than two and a half. The difference surprises almost everybody planning a playground for the first time.

Where the two metres come from

The safety zone is not a decorative margin. It is the space a child travels into after letting go of the handrail on a carousel at speed. EN 1176-5, the part of the standard covering carousels, assumes that centrifugal force will throw the child clear of the platform, and it sets out an area that has to stay empty so the fall ends on grass rather than on a kerb.

Nothing from this list may sit inside the zone: a fence, a bench, a bin, a post, a lamp column, a tree, a kerb, a low wall or another piece of play equipment. A hard obstacle in that spot is exactly what the standard exists to prevent.

The zone is measured from the edge of the unit outwards, on the ground, in every direction. It is not a circle drawn around the centre post, which is the version people tend to sketch by hand and which comes out too small on the corners.

Real figures for typical units

The table below is taken from published product sheets for equipment in the same class as ours. We give it so you can size up a site before settling on a particular model.

Comparative market data, not the parameters of Bol-Met units. We confirm the exact dimensions of our carousels by email before an order, together with the foundation drawing.

How to work it out on your own plot

Measure the clear rectangle that has nothing hard inside it. Subtract 2 metres from each side. What is left is the largest footprint of equipment that will fit there.

An example from a municipal site we supplied: a plot of 7 × 6 metres with a hedge along one side. After the zone was subtracted, 3 × 2 metres were left for the unit itself. A carousel of 150 × 150 cm went in without trouble, but a seesaw over 3 metres long did not, in any orientation, because the longest remaining dimension was exactly 3 metres. It ended with a section of hedge being cut back.

Send us the dimensions of the plot with your enquiry and we will do this arithmetic for you, in both orientations, before anything is ordered. The enquiry form takes a minute and it is a cheaper way to find out than discovering it at unloading.

Two units next to each other

The zones of a carousel and a seesaw must not overlap. If you are planning both, calculate each zone separately and add them together. With a carousel of 150 × 150 cm and a seesaw you realistically need a dozen metres or more of clear space in line, not a few.

This is where most crowded sites go wrong. Two units bought at the same time get placed as a pair, three metres apart, because that looks tidy on the drawing. On the ground it means each unit is standing inside the other one's fall space.

Surfacing: when it becomes compulsory

What decides is the free fall height, that is the distance from the highest point a child can stand on down to the ground. Above 60 cm, EN 1177 requires impact attenuating surfacing: sand, gravel of a suitable grading, wood chips or a polyurethane system with tested performance.

Platform carousels usually come in around 45 cm, below the threshold, which means they can go straight onto grass with no groundworks. Check the data sheet for your unit, though, because post carousels with raised seats can reach 70 cm and then surfacing is unavoidable. The cost difference between those two cases is set out in the piece on playground surfacing.

What the post-installation inspection looks at

Whoever carries out the inspection after assembly measures the zone with a tape and checks for obstacles inside it. If there are any, the unit is not released for use and the report goes into the handover file with a finding against it. Putting it right usually means moving a bench or shifting a fence, which costs more in nerves than in money but can delay the opening of the site by weeks.

Space is only one of the three numbers worth settling before you order. The other two are the age of the children and how many of them use the unit at once, and those are covered in the piece on carousel load capacity.