Drums for a Playground

Musical instruments are one thing that I don’t remember seeing on many playgrounds when I was a kid, and drums in particular were always a lot of fun when I was on a playground that had them.  At the Adventurous Child we’ve come up with a pretty cool (and durable) solution to putting a drum set on an outdoor playground.

The drums themselves are made out of a plastic tube (approx 24” in diameter) into which we install either a wood or plastic ring that is mounted flush to one side of the drum.  To that ring we attach a ¼” thick plastic “drum head” (made of HDPE, the same type of plastic we use for all of our plastic parts) which is very strong, but thin enough to still vibrate when struck with a rubber mallet.

The rubber mallet itself is actually made of a plastic rod onto which we bolt a piece of rubber which is very resilient and not easily affected the weather (it’s actually the same rubber that we install at the bottom of our slides, and as a fall surface on some playgrounds).

Finally, the drums are then mounted on stands and can be installed in several different ways once they are delivered to the site, although they are generally mounted onto an existing concrete pad of some sort. The end result of all of this is a drum, or a set of drums, (each of which are tuned to a different note) that have a rich, deep-bass sound which are a lot of fun to play, but are still very resistant to the weather and vandalism.

Water Tables

It looks like I ended up taking quite a hiatus from writing this blog, the whole “getting married” thing kind of screwed up my schedule a bit.

Anyways, to get back into the swing of things I’ve picked a fairly simple piece to write about this week; the Water Table.

The water tables are fairly simple units which made using a plastic mold that was designed by Clark Kugler and is unique to The Adventurous Child.  Generally the water tables are installed in sets of (3), with each table about being about 8” lower than the one before it. Each table has shallow “path” in the bottom that a small stream of water would run down as well as slots in the side that children can place plastic dams in to block the flow of water if they want to play with boats etc.

All the tables have a drain in one end to allow water to flow down into the table below it; however each drain can also be closed off using a ball valve, so that children can keep the water from flowing into another table.  The valve on the lowest table is generally left closed so that water doesn’t flow out and onto the ground during play, however all of the valves are removable to allow for easy draining and so that they can be taken inside at night (to keep them safe from teenagers.)

Gravel Panels

One of the things that you can add on to a Truck Pit is a Gravel Panel which is just a Tracking Panel that has been modified for use with gravel or sand.  The Gravel Panel can feature ramps, clear tubes, pipes, and chutes to run the gravel through and then have it fall back into the Truck Pit.

Building a Gravel/Tracking Panel is pretty complicated and is generally left to some of the more experienced and skilled carpenters. What makes these panels so hard to build is the high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic that makes up just about the entire panel.

While very strong (and pliable when heated) the HDPE parts cannot be sanded or otherwise filled to hide blemishes, which means every part has to be carefully machined and cut to fit correctly on the first try. Also, since every screw that holds these parts to the panel needs to have a pilot hole (another requirement of working with HDPE), accuracy is crucial to making sure that all of the parts line up with the panel itself, which has already been cut and drilled on a CNC machine.

Truck Pits (Part 2)

I think I forgot to do this last time, but if you’re interested in seeing a picture of a Truck Pit check out this page on the Adventurous Child’s website.

So… back to building a Truck Pit…

The next step in the process is to bend the roads and tunnels.  To do this we have two 4 foot long heating elements that are spaced out to match the “crease lines” that are required for the tunnel.  The heating elements gently heat the plastic until it is workable, however working out the heating time can pretty tricky and it takes several flips of the plastic to get it evenly heated.

Once the tunnel was fully heated I would simply bend the tunnels along the “crease lines” at 90 degree angles and then run the tunnel under the sink to quickly cool down the plastic.  When the plastic had cooled off enough so it wasn’t able to bend anymore, I would repeat the process on the other 2 tunnels, and on both ramps. While it’s a little more complicated and risky to bend plastic vs. just building a tunnel with three pieces of plastic and some screws; bending the plastic creates a much stronger finished product t and it also looks better.

Well that’s about all it takes to make those tunnels and ramps.  I know it seems pretty daunting to bend and work with plastic, but it’s actually quite easy once you apply a little heat.

Truck Pits

The first summer I worked for The Adventurous Child I spent most of my time just cutting parts for the different playground equipment that we built, which was a pretty simple (if not boring) job; However the second summer was not as easy…

Things must have been busy in the shop when I started working because one of my first assignments was to build a Truck Pit.  Up until that point the most complicated thing I had built was a few decks and maybe a short platform, but nothing as complicated as a Truck Pit which has a lot of parts and bent plastic tunnels.  While there are a lot of individual parts, once they’re all cut actually assembling the Truck Pit is relatively straight forward since there are several jigs to help with spacing everything out.  As a young ” kid” the hardest parts was actually getting each side out of the jig, becasue once everything is screwed together it becomes incredibly heavy (although at this point they were still built out of wood, they’re even heavier now that they are made out of plastic.

Once I got them out of the jigs I needs to clear a space in the shop larger enough to assemble the Truck Pit so I could cut and attach the “roads”.  Once the roads go on the whole thing becomes really heavy, however that actually works out to be a good thing for two reasons;  one is that in the both shop and on the playground its shear weight keeps it from moving around while you are working/playing on it (in fact once its installed you only need a stake or two to keep it in place, permanently).  The second advantage is the Truck pit is that its pretty close to indestructible due to how solidly its built, which consequently adds a lot to its weight.

After the Truck Pit was squared up and roads and ramps into the pit were attached it was time to  cut the tunnels and ramps while the heating elements warmed up, but I’ll talk about actually bending all of that in my next post…

Hello Everyone

Hello All, and welcome to my blog.  I’ve been working in the playground “industry”at  my Dad’s company (The Adventurous Child) since I was tall enough to reach the Radial Arm Saw.

Since then I’ve seen a lot of very cool and interesting playgrounds / play areas / outdoor classrooms (whatever you want to call them), and I’ve built my fair share of interesting playground equipment as well.

Hopefully with this blog I’ll be able to share some of these stories and show off some of the custom playground equipment I’ve designed and/or built, as well as offer some ideas / tips/ tricks for choosing the right equipment as well as maintaining it properly.

Thanks for reading, I ‘m looking forward to the future of this blog.