Landscape Architect Articles

LASN Playground Safety April 200404-01-04 | News

Tires Tread on Playgrounds

Flex-O-Curb, made of tire rubber, provides a soft border for a play area. It can be placed on top of the ground and secured with special fasteners, foregoing trenching and excavation. The curbing can also be stacked.

The car culture of California every year disposes some 34 million tires, about 408 million pounds of waste rubber stockpiled, illegally dumped, or legally clogging landfills.

Tierra Verde Industries has two practical uses for the rubber: Grubble, a playground surface made of 100% California recycled tire rubber (no steel belted tires used) ground into gravel-size particles and offered in four colors (brown, grass green, wine red or sky blue) that will not leach into soil; and Flex-O-Curb, rubber curbing specifically designed to contain loose-fill ground cover, which alone puts over eight million pounds of recycled rubber from landfills to use.

These products are part of a growing trend toward environmentally-responsible products, just as the modular paver tiles made by Rubbersidewalks, Inc., resolve the conflict between invasive tree roots and concrete sidewalks, helping preserve the urban forest while keeping tires out of landfills.

Most playground injuries result from falls. Six inches of Grubble, cushions falls from 10 feet. American Standard Test Methods established a playground safety standard of 200 Gs to prevent head trauma and brain damage from falls. Grubble meets this standard with a large margin to spare (test data is available from the company upon request); it will not float or blown away and can be installed by hand or by a blower.

Grubble is the playground surface, made of 100% California recycled tire rubber (no steel belted tires used) ground into gravel-size particles. The manufacturer specifies a ?EUR??,,????'??six-inch depth will give 12 ft. of fall height; three-inch depth will give 10 ft. of fall height when applied on top of four inches of a sand subsurface.?EUR??,,????'??

The company reports Grubble is half the price and more durable in cost comparisons with rubber mats or pour-in-place rubber playground surfaces. Wood chips are less expensive than an equal quantity of Grubble, although the company asserts that wood chips requires about twice the quantity to give an equivalent cushion and that chips must be replenished annually, as one-third to one-half of their volume turns to soil.

Walters Property Management in Southern California has replaced wood chips with Grubble on many playgrounds.

Flex-O-Curb can be placed on top of the ground and secured with special fasteners which make expensive trenching and excavation unnecessary. Sections for commercial use measure seven inches high, six inches wide and six feet long. By this September, four-inch-tall sections will be introduced for residential use.

Tierra Verde says this curbing costs less than a concrete one of equivalent size and its flexibility makes it ideal for creating curved or circular play areas; it is also stackable to 14 inches.

Ron Allevato of Tierra Verde developed Grubble and Flex-O-Curb. Allevato spent 31 years working in test laboratories of the California aerospace industry before started a wholesale nursery in 1985, which evolved into Corona Wholesale Landscape Materials. In 1997, he created an early version of ground rubber playground surface from tire sidewalls.

For more information, visit www.grubblellc.com.

National Playground Safety Week 2004

The National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS) has announced April 26-30 as Playground Safety Week, a time to focus on and to advocate safety and injury prevention on our nation’s playgrounds.

The goal of the NPPS is for all states to officially support safe playgrounds. Last year, 35 states proclaimed National Playground Safety Week, down from 43 in 2002.

For more information, go to www.uni.edu/playground/home.html