School Playground Improvements, Capital Projects

Over several school holidays over the past few years we have been involved in transforming outdoor play areas at an Infant School in Derby City.
The project has been multi-faceted and has broadly comprised the following:
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- To install artificial turf to sections of their outdoor spaces including a timber ‘around-tree’ seating area
- Re-surface a sloping area with red ‘rubber mulch’ materials to improve grip and reduce mud mess
- Design, fabricate and install new timber climbing wall, gantry and slide area
- To install a new blue rubber mulch surface to be laid as a grippy shock absorbent surface
- Fabricate a free-standing set of ‘Monkey Bars’ to sit on this surface for the children to play on
For the artificial grass installation, the muddy side garden areas of the school grounds were replaced with 36mm Wonderyarn artificial grass. This required an extensive amount of excavation as Type 1 stone was laid on top of compacted soil, followed by a weed membrance and layer of Granite dust. Finally the Wonderyarn product was laid with sand infill. This
product, when installed correctly comes with a 10 year guarantee, which reassured the school that this surface would give years of durable performance for the children.
This made a huge improvement to the playing areas, and in fact encouraged teaching sessions to be held outside in the summer months!
Additionally the timber seating area that was constructed around one of the trees also facilitated outdoor reading sessions. The grass areas were edged with charcoal bricks, and any trees, shrubs and stumps that were unnecessary were removed so the useful space and lawn area could be maximised.
Finally the ‘amphitheatre’ area was earmarked for improvement. This area comprised of graduated terraced timber bench seating, that was starting to rot and fall into
dilapidation. The seating was removed and the area prepared for construction. A timber platform was built at the top of the gradient to form a balcony/lookout area, then a timber climbing wall was built on the gradient and multi-coloured climbing holds installed into the slope. Finally a slide was installed in the centre of the frame, and this would lead onto a blue rubber mulch surface to provide a safe surface for the children to play on.
Onto this surface we fabricated a new set of ‘Monkey Bars’, which had to be built to the right specification to maintain health and safety standards. All in all we think these improvements have revamped this play area, making it an appealing place to be and an attractive inner city haven for these children.