Planning Playground Safety Zones Before You Send a Quote

You already know a use zone is not optional. What costs you time is redoing it every time a client moves a slide a metre to the left.

Use zones start with fall height

Every piece of play equipment has a free height of fall, and BS EN 1176 ties the space you keep clear around it to that figure. A tall platform needs more clearance than a low one, and swings and slides need extra room in the direction of travel.

You are tracking this for every piece on the layout, against its neighbours and against the site boundary. Doing that by hand across a 12-piece layout is where errors creep in.

What the configurator shows you

Drop a piece of equipment onto your site plan and its use zone is drawn around it, using the manufacturer's figures where the catalogue holds them. Where two zones overlap, or a zone crosses your boundary, you see a warning on the plan.

• A use zone for every piece, worked out from its footprint and free height of fall where the catalogue has them
• Longer zones for swings and slides in their direction of travel, as EN 1176 expects
• Warnings when zones overlap or leave the site boundary, without ever blocking your layout
• Surfacing priced by area in square metres, with a running total that updates as you add, move, or swap equipment

Treat the zones as a planning aid

The zones are advisory estimates to help you plan, not a certificate of compliance. Your installer and your inspector still check the finished layout against the standard, for the real equipment on the real site.

What you gain is an early, visible check: 1.83 m of clearance here, 2.4 m there, tied to the exact placement. Problems show up at the drawing stage instead of on site.

Getting the geometry right the first time is worth more than getting it right eventually — a revised layout costs you days, and an early check costs you nothing extra.