OZBREED’S LIVING SOFT FALL™ FOR PLAYGROUNDS
10 April 2017
Living Soft Fall™ is a natural way to ensure safety on playgrounds while keeping our communities green.
Until recently turf has been difficult to use in playgrounds as a soft fall mechanism as it has not been able to withstand the heavy foot traffic, nor did the material meet fall attenuation.
Now, however, Ozbreed are able to offer a new product called Living Soft Fall™, which has been designed to help solve the problem of growing turf in soft fall areas. Best of all, Living Soft Fall™ is a growing medium that has been tested and certified to meet playground surfacing requirements and soft fall standards.
Living Soft Fall™ is used like an underlay for turf. It is installed to a minimum of 200mm deep to meet the Australian standard and is a media made up of stabilised organics. This media is then mixed with a long lasting inert soft rubber carbon polymer and laid in the soft fall area with a turf overlay.
The benefits for using Living Soft Fall™ to design our future playgrounds are numerous, the product is:
- Better for the environment | Increased greenery in urban spaces has the advantages of cooling our cities, increasing oxygen production, and the increase of the health and wellbeing of our communities. Green infrastructure enhances the healthiness, liveability and sustainability of urban environments.
- Better for the health for our children | Children who are exposed to scenes of nature while exercising have been recorded as more likely to experience health-enhancing effects after activity, including lower blood pressure.
- Long-term safety | Living Soft Fall™ and turf has been shown to be safe at a minimum critical fall height of 4 metres, demonstrating how safe turf can be with the right subsurface. Turf grown in this media was tested and passed, both when the turf was alive and dead, even when heavily compacted with a compacting machine.
- Highly resistant to compaction | In testing, the media itself did not compact under a range of strenuous circumstances which shows it is highly resistant to compaction. The media aids in wearability due to its non-compactive nature.
- Cost effective and safer than other material | The fall heights of Living Soft Fall™ and turf are generally much higher than rubber, artificial turf and mulch, making it a safer product.
- Cooler on a hot day | Living Soft Fall™ with turf is safe even on a hot day, and a child will not burn their feet. A child is at risk of a burn when a surface exceeds 50°C. Rubber surfaces have reportedly reached up to and above 60°C during summer weather.
- Can be used in conjunction with rubber | Living Soft Fall™ and turf can be used in combination with other playground surfaces.
- Stabilised by turf roots | The Living Soft Fall™ mix used with turf cuts down the issue of frequent replacement and maintenance that loose mulch has, as the turf stabilises and provides retention with its roots and rhizomes. Ozbreed do not expect the Living Soft Fall™ material to slump significantly or deteriorate in 5 years.
- More than just fall zones | Living Soft Fall™ and turf can also be used in surfaces outside the fall zone, allowing the use of portable equipment and provides a safer surface for general playground play.
Living Soft Fall™ material was tested to, and exceeds the Australian standard AS/NZS4422:1996 Amdt 1 Playground Surfacing-Specification. Ozbreed has ensured that Sapphire® Buffalo, Kenda® Kikuyu or Nara™ native turf were all tested and meet the standards above.
For more information, visit the Ozbreed website at www.ozbreed.com.au
Alternatively, you can contact Ozbreed's National Business Development Manager, Emil Montibeler directly:
M 0488 669 330
P 02 4577 2977