What to check before buying playground equipment: a checklist

The unit has arrived, the courier has unloaded the pallet, and the packaging contains the instructions and nothing else. The email from two weeks ago said everything was included. The handover is in nine days.

Start with the plot, not the catalogue

The usual order is the reverse: somebody finds a unit they like, calls for a price, and measures the site at the installation stage. By then it is too late, because the money has left the budget and the safety zone overlaps the kerb.

Measure the rectangle of clear space that has nothing hard in it: no fence, bench, tree, bollard, bin or kerb. Take 2 metres off every side. What is left is the real space you have for a unit. A carousel with a 1,5 m footprint therefore needs a square of about 5,5 by 5,5 m, which is over 30 square metres. What counts inside the zone and what does not is set out in the article on the playground safety zone.

The second number to establish at this stage is the free fall height. Above 60 cm, EN 1177 requires impact attenuating surfacing across the whole zone, and that is a cost which can exceed the price of the equipment. Ask for the height before you compare prices, because two units at the same price can imply budgets that differ by a large margin. The surface options are compared in the article on playground surfacing.

Ask for the certificate before you pay

On a publicly accessible site, equipment without a certificate to EN 1176 will not pass handover. A commission does not accept the explanation that the document is on its way, and an inspector has no basis on which to release the unit into service.

So ask for two things before the transfer: a scan of the certificate and a scan of the declaration of conformity. The first relates to the design that was tested, the second confirms that the unit being delivered matches that design. While you are there, check that the equipment name in the documents matches the name in the offer, because certificates sometimes cover a different model from the same family. The difference between the two documents is explained in the article on the EN 1176 certificate.

EN 1176 is a European standard, so the same certificate and declaration are the documents an inspector or a handover commission expects in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia and anywhere else the standard has been adopted. That is worth knowing if you are buying across a border and wondering whether Polish paperwork will be recognised.

What sits outside the headline price

The catalogue price and the amount you actually spend are rarely the same number. Ask directly about every line below, preferably by email, so the answer exists in writing.

With us, courier delivery is free across Poland and the certificate and declaration travel with every order at no extra charge. Assembly is an option priced by distance: 2,50 zł per kilometre one way from Rogowo, which you can work out in the delivery and assembly calculator. Assembly needs a concrete foundation and two people, whoever does it.

Who you are actually buying from

With equipment that has to stand for well over a decade and carry a warranty for two of them, it matters whether you are talking to the maker or to a reseller shipping somebody else's product under a label. A reseller cannot answer a question about foundation depth without phoning someone, and in a warranty claim they sit in the middle of a chain they do not control.

The check takes fifteen minutes:

• Ask for the company registration number and tax identification number, and look the company up in the national business register of the country it operates in.
• Ask for the address of the production works, not the correspondence address.
• Ask a technical question only a maker can answer: wall thickness of the tube, foundation dimensions, how the bearing is mounted.
• Ask for photographs from production or from completed installations, ideally showing the actual unit rather than a render.
• Ask how long the company has been making this type of equipment, and for two or three sites you can look at.

For the record on our side: we have been making metal carousels and seesaws since 2011, in Rogowo 69, 87-515 Rogowo, Poland, and the person who answers the phone is the person who knows the welding.

Payment, lead time and what happens after a fault

Public buyers in most countries cannot pay in advance, so if you are purchasing for a municipality, a school or a kindergarten, the question about payment terms has to be asked during market research rather than after the offer is chosen. A seller who insists on prepayment is excluded on procedure, whatever the price. We are exempt from VAT, which changes the shape of the invoice, so it is worth confirming with your finance department how they want the document issued before the order goes in.

Check the lead time in two dimensions. The first is length: ours is 7 working days, 5 of production and 2 of transport, and a commitment like that can be required in writing in the order. The second matters more on public projects where the handover date sits in a contract. A lead time counted from the moment payment clears shifts the whole schedule by however long the internal paperwork takes, often another week. So ask directly when the clock starts: at the order or at the money.

On the warranty, ask two things nobody asks before buying and everybody asks after a fault: who pays the transport on a replacement part, and whether the manufacturer sends the component or requires the whole unit to be returned. With an oversized structure, that second answer decides whether a claim costs very little or a great deal. Our manufacturer warranty runs 2 years against material and production defects, with assembly in line with the instructions as the condition.

The checklist to work through before ordering

When to walk away from an offer

Two answers should end the conversation whatever the price. The first is a refusal to send the certificate before payment. The second is an inability to state the free fall height, because it means the seller does not know the product they are selling and you cannot estimate the surfacing cost.

A separate case is a price that sits clearly below everything else for equipment described as certified. Testing a design, galvanising and powder coating cost every manufacturer roughly the same, so a large difference has to come from somewhere: a thinner wall, galvanising that was skipped, or documents that simply do not exist. What that buys you in the long run is covered in the article on when repair stops paying.