128 Wheelbarrow Trips 0 Regrets

So you broke down and bought a swing set for the kids. Whether you paid someone to put it together for you or you decided to brave it yourself, the hard part is yet to come. Because the hardest part of installing the swing set on your property is the preparation of the area.

That is, of course, if you decide to follow the suggested "safe-area" requirements established for residential play structures. I did. It took me a total of 30 hours of hard labor, 8 cubic yards of wood chips, 128 wheelbarrow trips and 8 tablets of Alleve. But, it is finished and the kids and I could not be more pleased.

Before I go any further, for further clarification, let me explain what I"m talking about when it comes to swingsets. These days, swingsets are not what we were used to growing up. These aren"t aluminum slides that burned the backs of your thighs in the heat of summer. These are industrial grade plastic slides that don"t fry your backside but still cause tremendous static as little butts slide down. These are, essentially, community playground quality playsets that can cost upwards of $5000! I"m all for getting my kids quality things (Especially when safety is concerned), but when I can buy that industrial grade deck-inset Weber grill with built-in fridge and bar for that price, I have to re-align my priorities.

When I was a kid, my sister and I had a swingset from Sears that was some sort of Olympic Decathlon themed. There were monkey bars, rings, 2 swings, and a slide with blue screen printed divers and gymnasts. By the time we were finished with it, the rusted thing had a bent frame (from the time, as a high school student, I tried to do pullups on it) and a warped, busted slide (from the time, also in high school that I tried to ride my bike down it). These new sets are made of wood and have installed safety precautions like tube slides so that idiots can"t try to ride their bikes down them.

So we bought a basic playset and had it installed by the manufacturer. Then came the careful planning of the play area. There are 3 things to concern yourself with: clearance, edging, and ground coverage. This article will highlight what I decided to do for my yard. Take what you can use noodads.

CLEARANCE
They say you should have a 6 foot clearance on all sides of the swingset. This includes clearance of fences, tree limbs, sidewalk, etc. Great if you live on a 60 acre estate with wide open fields (much like the people who were photographed for the installation manual). But for people with more modest homes and land, this could be an issue. I cleared out an area roughly 24ft X 36ft. This gave ample room for the playset but did not necessarily give me 6 feet of clearance on all sides. You obviously need to use you best judgement. The requirements are in place in case your kid decides to jump off the slide platform onto his head. If you can"t secure that type of land then you need to police your kid more.

GROUND COVERAGE
When it comes to coverage, the depth is determined by the material used. I looked into getting the synthetic rubber mulch. It has many benefits including lifetime guarantee, no color fading, and heavy enough to not blow around in the wind. The main problem is the price. I was quoted a price of $38 a cubic yard. As opposed to the $18 a cubic yard of wood chips cost. The advantage of the rubber mulch is you only need 3 inches of depth. With wood chips they recommend 6-8" of depth. That can add up. You could also use a pebble stone but those get everywhere and actually hurt pretty bad if you fall on it. I don"t know about you, but my feeling is no matter the size, rock is rock. I decided to go with the wood chips for 2 reasons: cost and aesthetic. My house sits in a fairly wooded area. The wood chips created a more natural look. And the $20 a cubic yard I saved didn"t hurt either.

EDGING
They recommend either the railroad ties or the metal edgers to mark off the play zone and separate the safety coverage from the rest of your yard. You really don"t need to have anything but edgers allow you to contain the ground coverage. I opted to dig deep (about 6 inches) into the ground and make the wood chips flush with the grass. I did this for the following reasons: railroad ties would require me to make a big rectangle in my yard. I thought, given my environment, it would look unnatural. And my wife feared my kids would trip and hurt themselves on the metal edgers. Most swingset places sell plastic edging blocks.These are upwards of $20 a piece for a 2 foot long piece. The cost factor prevented me from even considering these.

I used a hard steel edging tool to make the edge and then used a shovel to shovel out the grass 2 feet into the play area. I then dumped the wood chips over the interior grass and the exposed dirt on the outside. I chose to make the chips flush with the grass because I wanted to make a curved edge to my play area and it looks pretty neat inset into the grass.

The hardest part for me, was I couldnt get  the truck to dump the wood chips directly into the pit. Because of the location of my septic tank and the trees that pepper my yard, the truck had to dump it onto my front lawn. Which means I needed to wheelbarrow all of it one wheelbarrow at a time. In all it took 128 trips back and forth. Considering the wheelbarrow held approximately 10 shovels full each, you can do the math. Let"s just say Billy Blanks would have been psyched at how ripped I was after that. My back ached for 2 weeks.

Remember, you can choose to follow all 3, some, are none at all. My advice is to do it all at once, before your kids play on the darn thing. And the first time your kid falls off the ladder onto their back, you will realize it was time and money well spent.