Fall Area Borders

Fall zone areas for playground equipment are designed to absorb the shock of a fall from a playset or swingset. They also serve to designate the play area of the backyard from the rest of the yard. These fall areas are usually bordered with plastic or wood landscape timbers and filled with products such as pea gravel, engineered wood fiber, or rubber mulch. The materials you use have a lot to with the expected fall height from a piece of equipment. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has developed a chart outlining each product and it's critical fall height absorption value. Click here to view chart.

Fall Area Borders can be found at a multitude of sites on the internet or you can find adequate parts to complete a backyard playset project from any home improvement store. Wood landscape borders are the easiest to obtain locally and fairly inexpensive, however, there are a couple of problems with this type of border. Believe it or not, it takes more than a few timbers stacked on top of each other to contain the amount of fill material for your project. Most of the time these types of borders are constructed poorly, often failing and spilling fill material out into the yard. Due to the chemical treatment in the wood, they cannot be taken to a landfill at the end their usable life.