Maintaining a Safe Playground: 5 Tips for Keeping a Play Area in Check
Maintaining a playground in your own backyard is a responsibility that any parent needs to take quite seriously. When your child's playground is at their school or the local park, it is typically some employee's job to walk around every morning and make sure everything is on the up and up, but in a home playground, you probably don't have one of those employees on staff. That makes it your job.
So from time to time, especially when you know your children are going to be spending some time playing, you should do a safety inspection.
One of the first things you want to check for is deterioration of any kind, whether from weather or wear and tear. Broken equipment can cause unnecessary hazards, and weather can have a devastating effect on certain materials over time. Plastic, for example, will become brittle when exposed to extreme cold or sunshine. Metal can corrode or rust. Wood, which is the most durable, is even subject to some splintering and cracking