Why is synthetic turf becoming the most popular premium playground surface?

What makes synthetic turf superior to other materials?**

Use this table for a quick comparison. You can click any item to skip to that part of the explanation, or just read all of them by scrolling down.

Now for the details:

Fall safety

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) is generally safe in most cases. While it can get ratings of fairly high fall heights, poured in place rubber can make injuries more likely than other alternatives depending on the season.¹

PiP rubber also needs to be patched, which can cause it to lose critical amounts impact attenuation if done improperly.

Wood Chips are fairly unsafe. Injuries on Wood Chips are between 287% and 496% more likely than sand according to a 2009 study.² Sand isn’t even the safest playground surface, meaning that wood chips are a very poor choice for year round safety.

Loose Rubber is probably the safest material to fall on. If you’re only interested in fall safety they’re going to be the best choice by a small margin. However as we’ll get into later loose rubber can have serious issues with sanitation. Moreover you need to be careful because many brands of loose rubber do not have 100% of the steel wire removed. Even brands that claim 99.9% wire-free can still have between 20-30 exposed rigid steel wires per pound of material. If you choose loose rubber we highly recommend you get 100% wire free rubber.

Another issue is that loose materials get moved around often by children making piles or kicking it out of the play area, which can lower impact attenuation in areas that it is moved from. We will talk more on this in the maintenance section, but it lowers the real-world safety of loose-rubber.

Synthetic Turf playground systems actually have a double layer of protection. It has a recycled foam pad underneath the turf as well as the added cushioning of the synthetic turf above it. Long-term studies don’t exist for such a new product, but extensive testing has determined great performance passing critical fall height requirements of fall heights as high as 12 feet consistently.

Behavior at various temperatures

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) will get quite hot during the summer. Poured in Place Rubber is also vulnerable to cracking during winter. This means that in areas that it freezes during winter you’ll likely need to repair it every year.³

Wood Chips are fairly resilient to high temperature. They’re the coolest under high temperatures, but have severe issues at cold temperatures. Wood chips and Engineered Wood Fiber can retain water and freeze, becoming extremely dangerous during winter months. According to standardized testing frozen wood chips can surpass the limit for a safe fall height from as low as 2 feet.⁴

This means that a fall of 2 feet onto frozen wood mulch will surpass 1000 HIC, which means a 90% chance of a moderate head injury and an 18% chance of a severe head injury for an adult.⁶

Compare that to a 2007 Toyota Camry which has a HIC of 175 when in a head-on car crash at 35 miles per hour into a concrete wall.⁷ That’s about a 15% chance of a minor injury and a 5% chance of a moderate injury. You’re generally much better off getting into a car accident on the way to the frozen park than falling at it!

Loose rubber, like everything except wood chips, will get quite hot in the sun. Most loose rubber doesn’t retain water, so it has minimal problems at cold temperatures. That’s not to say that it maintains equal efficiency at low temperatures, but rather that there’s no known product that doesn’t have some issues in the same circumstances.

Synthetic Turf can get quite hot under direct sun, but the padding underneath is both immune to hardening under high temperatures and kept fairly cool. The system has great drainage and doesn’t retain moisture, so there are minimal problems at colds temperatures. That’s not to say that it maintains equal efficiency at low temperatures, but rather that there’s no known product that has less issues in the same circumstances.

Lifespan

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) can have problems weathering winter in northern climates. It may require repairs in spring after it thaws as pieces chip or fall off in the freeze/thaw cycle. It can have cracks or even gaps in bad cases, and unless quickly patched children are liable to pull at it and cause further damage. This reduces the lifespan of the surface and has led to a shift towards turf as a premium safety surface in these climates.

If you’ll be installing it in an indoor facility or in a climate that doesn’t have freezing winters you’ll experience a much longer lifespan.

Wood Chips have a very short lifespan. They need to be topped off constantly as they get blown away, decompose, and go missing. They often need to be replaced every two years on average for sanitary reasons.

Loose Rubber gets kicked out, scooped up and swept away very frequently. This means that you need to top if off every year or two.

Synthetic Turf for playgrounds is often warrantied for 8-10 years, and depending on use can last for as long as 15 or more years. The padding can be warrantied for as long as 25 years, meaning many turf systems have a much less expensive second cycle, needing only the turf to be replaced. See the table below for a ballpark.

Aesthetics

Poured in Place rubber (PiP Rubber) can be considered the best looking surface for some installations. Indoors turf might look awkward or out of place, but you can have good-looking, colorful designs with PiP rubber.

Wood Chips are not rated highly among consumers in regards to appearance. Furthermore children tend to dislike them compared to other surfaces because of the uncomfortable nature of the surface.

Loose Rubber isn’t considered very good looking among consumers either.

Synthetic Turf is often considered among the most visually pleasing surface for playgrounds. Every system offers natural-looking colors, but some new systems are offering colored turf to do much of what Poured in Place Rubber can.

Sanitation

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) is fairly sanitary. With proper maintenance it will remain fairly clean for its lifetime.

Wood Chips are horrible in this department. They not only collect germs and mold, but retain moisture from urine, vomit, spit, blood and other fluids. In addition animals are attracted to them, leading to animals such as stray cats that will defecate in it.⁸ This can lead to a huge number of health risks.

Loose Rubber has large a number of toxicity concerns. Study after study has found hazardous chemicals in rubber mulch and crumb rubber.⁹ There is also a high risk of children ingesting pieces of crumb rubber and rubber mulch, which can lead to serious problems. Lastly many parents have expressed concern over the rubber stains caused by this mulch and it’s potential links to the suspected toxicity.¹⁰

Synthetic Turf is very clean. Good systems should not use crumb rubber for infill, as there are non-toxic alternatives available. The infill only reaches about 1/16th of an inch, so while it makes the turf stand up and helps with impact attenuation it would be extremely hard for children to access. There are no worries about grass allergies, rubber toxicity, bacteria buildup or staining. It also deters most bugs. Some systems even have built-in antimicrobial properties in the fibers, backing, and/or infill.

Price

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) is expensive. It often costs upwards of $12-15 per square foot or more.

Wood Chips are extremely cheap. They cost about $1-2 per square foot upfront. Engineered Wood Fiber is typically between $3-$4 per square foot.

Loose Rubber is a middle ground on pricing. It typically costs between $4-8 per square foot.

Synthetic Turf is typically slightly less expensive than poured in place rubber upfront. It can run from $11-14 per square foot installed. The cost of the second generation is reduced because of the long life of the padding.

Maintenance*

Poured in place rubber (PiP Rubber) is moderately expensive to upkeep, but the maintenance is more repair-focused than the constant attention needed for wood chips or loose rubber. Patching may be needed after frozen rubber thaws, and the rubber damages fairly easily. It should receive a new coating of binder every year or two.

Wood Chips are expensive to maintain. Constant sanitation concerns means you’ll need to replace your wood chips extremely often, as well as natural degradation and loss of chips to a number of factors.

Another problem with a loose material like wood chips is that children are going to move them around and play with them. This means that you need to dedicate time to monitoring that levels remain high enough to ensure safety. If the area below a slide is moved to make a pile somewhere else and a child falls off the slide and gets hurt, you could be liable.

Loose Rubber is fairly expensive to maintain. You’re going to lose rubber all the time, so replacing it will be a major cost. That said much like wood chips you need to monitor for areas where material being moved compromises safety.

To understand how much effort is required to maintain loose rubber or wood chips, know that every major park district or park office has one or more full-time employees that are dedicated to up-keeping these surfaces. That sort of expense really adds up, so the savings at initial installation are wiped out pretty quickly.

Synthetic Turf is extremely inexpensive to maintain. You won’t need to do anything past the basics like picking up trash.

*All playground surfaces will obviously require general maintenance like picking up trash and animal droppings if outdoors.

**All information presented is accurate to the best of our knowledge and presented in good faith that we’re giving as complete and accurate an overview of the situation as possible. We’ve sourced everything controversial as best we could. If anyone has any comments or concerns with this comparison please contact us.

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