Playground Ideas supports communities around the world to build children’s playground sets from local tools, materials and labor. We advocate for building locally because we believe that this model supports the long-term sustainability of playground sets and helps to ensure they will be maintained for years to come. In this article, we’re going to cover our approach to playground set maintenance and why we believe planning for maintenance from the beginning is essential to ensuring the long term maintenance of your children’s playground set.
Every day children’s playground sets get stomped on, swung around, drummed on, and kicked. Children’s playground sets take a daily beating. And that means that even the toughest, strongest, most expensive playground set will require maintenance sooner than you think. It’s helpful to think of a play set like a garden. Planting a garden is not a one-off event – keeping a garden requires regular care and attention. So do children’s playground sets. Any play set that is unmaintained will eventually become unsafe.
Before you even begin your playground set build, it is essential to know who will maintain it and how repairs will be funded. The cost to maintain locally built playgrounds is usually a very minimal amount each year, but when time and funds are not allocated the site can quickly fall to disrepair.
It is important to consider the long-term sustainability of the playground set throughout the process by:
- Involving the local community in the planning, design, and build to ensure high ownership of the project.
- Building play sets from low-cost, local materials so that when something breaks it is easy and affordable for the local community to repair.
- Relying on local builders. In particular, make sure whoever will be tasked with regular maintenance checks and repairs is involved in the build. This way, they will have intimate knowledge of the project and how it was built.
Once your children’s play set is complete, create a “repair kit” to make regular maintenance easy. Include things like a tin of grease/lubrication, extra rope, chain, extra bolts, nuts and washers, and a ratchet/spanner. Customize what you include depending on your site and keep it easily accessible.
You can learn more about building and maintaining children’s play sets in Playground Ideas’ “Playground Builder’s Handbook,” which covers everything you need to know to build a children’s play set from local tools, materials, and skills.
