Playground equipment & certified softfall · Perth
The impact area is the equipment. We draw it first.
Equipment, certified softfall and set-out drawings for councils, schools, childcare centres and strata across Perth's northern and eastern corridor. Give us your clear width; we'll draw the fall zone against it and price it before anyone orders a unit.
The Zone · set-out and price
Draw the impact area against your clear width.
Set the yard, the unit and the surface — the plan redraws to scale.
A scaled plan of the playground impact area against the yard boundary, with a section showing the softfall depth beneath the free height of fall.
95 m²
of certified impact area
That is the ground we surface — 6.8 × 4.4 m of equipment, expanded by 2,100 mm on every side. The expansion is not our margin; it is the impact area the standard sets from the unit's free height of fall, and it is the line every inspector measures from.
Measure the clear width — fence to fence, past the path, the bin store and the drainage pit. It is the number the impact area has to live inside.
Colour is free. Depth isn't. The chip changes the drawing and nothing else — it enters no line of the price.
Indicative only, ex GST, valid 30 days. We confirm on site: clear widths, levels, drainage, and what the existing surface is hiding.
What we do
Six things, priced the way a council report needs them.
Rates are supply-and-lay in the Perth metro, ex GST. Softfall is priced by the impact area, not by the equipment footprint — which is why the drawing comes before the number.
Wet-pour rubber softfall
SBR base with an EPDM wear layer, laid in situ to the tested depth for the unit's free height of fall. Bonded edges, no displacement, wheelchair-firm across the whole zone.
from $118 per m² at 30 mm
Pine bark softfall to AS 4422
Graded, tested playground bark over a drainage layer, laid to depth against a retained edge. Cheapest to lay; it needs topping up, and the depth is what the test certificate assumed.
from $38 per m²
Synthetic grass over shockpad
Closed-cell shockpad under a sand-filled turf, seamed and pinned. Looks like lawn, behaves like a tested surface, and does not displace out of the landing area.
from $135 per m²
Playground equipment, supplied & installed
Units to the AS 4685 series — toddler decks, swing bays, junior climbers, senior towers and nets. Footings, set-out, assembly and the handover pack with every serial number in it.
from $9,400 (double swing bay)
Independent post-installation inspection
To AS 4685.0, by an inspector who does not work for us. It goes in your file, and it is the document that answers the question your insurer will eventually ask.
$1,450 — included on every new install
Softfall replacement under existing equipment
Your unit stays. We audit it, drop-test the finished surface, strip the old material and lay the new depth to the free height of fall we measure on the day.
from $4,200
What sits behind the number
- Installing playgrounds and softfall since 2013
- Equipment supplied and installed to the AS 4685 series
- Surfacing tested to AS 4422 — the certificate is handed over with the job
- Independent post-installation inspection to AS 4685.0 on every new installation
- Annual inspections to AS/NZS 4486.1 quoted separately, by someone other than us
- $20m public liability · ABN 00 000 000 405 (placeholder)
Demonstration reviews
Three jobs, told by the people who signed them off.
“I had a council report due on the Thursday and no set-out. They drew the impact area over our reserve plan on the Tuesday, dimensioned to the fence line, and the depth table went in as an appendix. The report went up without a single question about the fall zone.”
“We were 1.2 m too narrow for the tower we'd already put in the budget. They told us at quote stage, not at handover, and drew what did fit instead. Losing the tower was annoying. Losing it after the concrete would have been a different meeting.”
“Third bark top-up in a year and the depth under the swings still failed our own check. They showed us the ten-year arithmetic instead of just quoting rubber, and we went into it with our eyes open.”
Where we work
Perth's northern and eastern corridor, drawn as reserves.
These are the parks, school grounds and communal yards we install in — drawn the way a parks department sees the metro, as a set of reserves rather than suburb blocks. Outside this corridor we still quote; add the travel and say so on the enquiry.
- Malaga
- Ballajura
- Ellenbrook
- Midland
- Guildford
- Bassendean
- Bayswater
- Morley
Yard and workshop in Malaga, which is why the corridor looks like that: a wet-pour crew and a load of graded bark both want to be back before the afternoon sets. Site visits across the corridor are free; a measured set-out drawing is free with a quote.
Get a set-out
Send us the space. We'll send back a drawing and a number.
Most of our enquiries start the same way: a clear width, a photo of what's there now, and a date the report is due. We come back with the impact area drawn over your plan, the tested depth for the unit you're considering, and a price broken into equipment, surfacing, access and the independent inspection — laid out so it can be pasted into a council report or a board paper without being retyped.
We call back within one business day, and we'll say on that call whether the space works. If it doesn't, we'll say so then, not at handover.
Quotes are ex GST and valid 30 days. We can quote against a purchase order, a panel arrangement or a straight invoice, and we're happy to be the second quote on a three-quote job.
What we won't do: shrink a fall zone to make a unit fit, or sign our own post-installation inspection.
Questions we get every week
Six answers, including the ones that cost us work.
What is “free height of fall”, and who measures it?
It is the vertical distance from the highest part of the equipment a child is intended to stand on, down to the surface below. Not the top of the roof, not the top of the handrail — the highest designated play surface. On our junior climber that is the 2.4 m deck; on the toddler unit it is a 900 mm deck plus the standing allowance, giving 1.2 m.
We measure it on site with the unit built, because the number changes if the ground falls away, if mulch has been graded up against a leg, or if someone has added a step. It is the single input that sets the depth of surfacing — which is why we won't take it off a brochure.
Why is the impact area so much bigger than the equipment?
Because a child leaves the equipment with sideways speed. The AS 4685 series (and EN 1176, which it follows) expands the footprint by an offset taken from the free height of fall: 1,500 mm for anything up to 1.5 m of fall, and above that ⌈2 × FHF / 3⌉ + 500 mm.
Our junior climber has a 6.8 × 4.4 m footprint and a 2.4 m free height of fall, so the offset is 2,100 mm on every side and the impact area is 11.0 × 8.6 m — 95 m², against 30 m² of equipment. Swings are the exception: they carry a directional zone, 1,500 mm to the sides and 3,600 mm fore and aft, because that is where a swinging child goes.
That is the number the surfacing is priced on, and it is why the drawing comes before the quote rather than after it.
Bark, sand, wet-pour or synthetic grass — which one should we buy?
Here is the same job four ways: our junior climber (2.4 m free height of fall, 95 m² impact area) in a 12.0 m clear yard, new equipment plus softfall, open site access. Depths are typical tested values; ten-year figures add five bark top-ups at $14 per m² and ten annual depth inspections at $420.
| Surface | Tested depth at 2.4 m | To lay | Over ten years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pine bark loose-fill | 300 mm, certified to 2.5 m | $34,990 | $45,840 |
| Synthetic grass over shockpad | 55 mm, certified to 2.6 m | $47,340 | $51,540 |
| Wet-pour rubber | 110 mm, certified to 3.0 m | $52,090 | $56,290 |
| Sand | Not certifiable at 2.4 m — the deepest sand we test reaches 2.0 m | ||
So the honest version is this: bark is $17,100 cheaper to lay, and after ten years of top-ups it is still $10,450 cheaper. The top-ups close the gap; they do not reverse it. What you are buying with wet-pour is not a cheaper decade — it is a surface that stays at its tested depth without anyone raking it, and that a wheelchair can cross. Bark buys you capital cost and a maintenance line item.
The bark and sand rows also assume someone actually does the top-ups. If the depth under the swings sits at 180 mm for two years, the tested depth on the certificate is not the depth you have.
What is an AS 4422 certificate, and why insist on seeing it?
AS 4422 is the impact-attenuation standard for playground surfacing. A surface is tested in a laboratory at a stated depth, and the result is a critical fall height — the greatest free height of fall that depth was tested to. It is a property of that surface at that depth, not a property of the trade name on the invoice.
These are typical tested depths. The figure that binds is the critical fall height on your surface's own AS 4422 test certificate, and we hand you a copy of it. Every depth on this page comes from a table of typical tested values, and the batch you receive has its own certificate — that document, not this calculator, is what your file needs.
If a supplier can't produce one for the exact product and depth, you have a surface with no demonstrated critical fall height, and an auditor will treat it that way.
Who inspects a new playground, and why shouldn't it be you?
A post-installation inspection to AS 4685.0 checks the built unit against the standard — entrapments, protrusions, clearances, footings, and whether the surfacing actually covers the impact area to depth. On every new installation we include one at $1,450, and it is carried out by an independent inspector who does not work for us and is not paid by the outcome.
We do it that way because an installer signing off their own work is worth nothing in a file. If something is wrong, we'd rather find out from someone with no reason to be kind about it — and so would whoever has to answer for the asset.
Ongoing inspections to AS/NZS 4486.1 are a separate arrangement, and we quote them separately or point you at someone who only does inspections.
What don't you do?
We don't write your risk assessment. We can hand over the drawings, the certificates and the inspection report that feed one, but the assessment is yours and it belongs to someone who knows how the space is supervised.
We don't carry out the annual inspections on playgrounds we installed. Same reason as the post-installation one.
And we won't shrink a fall zone to make a unit fit. If the impact area crosses your boundary, the drawing on this page shows it crossing, the unit goes grey, and the answer is a lower deck height, a different unit, or nature play with no free height of fall at all. That conversation is cheaper now than at handover.
This is a demonstration build by Sapience Analytics.
Want one pointed at your customers? We build conversion-focused sites for WA trades and service businesses — with the tool that answers your customers' hardest question sitting above the fold, not buried in a PDF.