Can you put a Bouncy Castle on Artificial Grass?
The short answer is that we're un-willing to do so. Technically it is possible to put a bouncy castle on artificial grass, but it just isn't economically viable; We would have to charge an incredible rate due to the amount of extra weight needed to secure it.
Most of our standard children's bouncy castles have 6 anchor points that we use to drive strengthened steel stakes through into the ground and secure the inflatable. These have a proven and tested capability to secure bouncy castles, satisfying the HSE rules of 1600 newtons of force per anchor point.
If we can't use stakes or drill into concrete and use anchor bolts, we have to use weights. We opt for bags of sand covered in the same PVC as bouncy castle material so that they look nice, we clip these on with strong carabiner clips and use these inside halls where there is no regulation about specific weights to be used, other than enough should be used to keep the inflatable secure.
When the inflatable is outside there are regulations for the amount of weight required; It's 163KG per anchor point (which is 1600 newtons of force). On a bouncy castle with 6 anchor points that equals 978KG. That is a literal tonne. That's not a figure of speech as in "Cor, that's a tonne of weight needed", it's an actual literal tonne of sand bags.
Sand bags are normally 25KG, so to reach the requirement of 163KG we would need to use 7 bags of sand per anchor point, or 42 bags of sand for a standard child's castle.
For a single bouncy castle on artificial grass we could only load the van with one inflatable and the required sand bags before we became illegally over-weight. Meaning we could realistically only do a single job that day (possibly two if we had enough time). We would also have arms the size of pop-eye the sailor man, moving through 42 bags of sand onto the van, into the garden and then packing it away again and unloading it. It's simply not viable to do it; we would need to charge an entire day's cost for one single job.
The trouble is, some companies are prepared to do this with just 4 sand bags for the entire inflatable. Customers often do not know the real amount required and so no one is the wiser; as long as there isn't an accident...
Sadly, it's only when there is an accident that people come to understand exactly why these rules are in place and why the weight required is so high. A strong freak gust of wind would easily carry away an un-secured bouncy castle that has been weighted with only a few sand bags. If a child is on the inflatable at the time, the result can be a tragedy.
We refuse to set-up on concrete or artificial grass for this reason. While others may "get away with it" without incident for a long time, it's an inevitability that it will occur and a child will pay the price.
Besides, artificial grass is horrible. The world doesn't need more plastic. It removes homes for insects and it's actually so much hotter in warm weather than real grass; It may mean you never have to cut it, but it's a huge price to pay!
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