Bouncy castle - Pegging, weighing and overkill etc...
Just a reminder for those who I hear saying things like "7x sandbags for an 11x15 is ridiculous and overkill etc...
The 163kg comes from scientific trials by those who created the British standards and is not made up. You need 163kg per anchor point and a total of 978kg on an inflatable with 6 anchors & a whopping 3586kg on a 22 anchor 12ft platform slide.
163kg is the exact amount of resistance in KN it takes to break the cohesion between the peg and soil & pull a peg out of ideal grass at a 45-degree angle on just 1 of the inflatables anchor points.
Exceed this figure and the peg loses grip. 163kg is also what pull a 24mph wind has on an inflatable. This is force 5 on the Beaufort scale which can be found on the internet as follows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale. Hence those figures being used for safety.
Reducing the size of the peg from the standard reduces the amount of grip and as such it becomes unsafe. A tent peg, for example, will only achieve 19kn and we can all agree no one would use those.
In the absence of grass, you need to replace the 163kg per anchor point with something else. Using 1x 25kg sandbag is almost the same as using a tent peg for direct comparison and totally inadequate.
You can achieve 163kg per anchor, however you please, you can use vehicles, sandbags, waterbails, dumbbells or tie the anchors off (using 300kg rated rope to account for any reductions in breaking strain by knots) to anything static such as benches, lamp posts, fences and railings ec... You can even tie it to your mother in law if she's heavy enough (mine could probably hold a slide on her own
)
Just remember that anything less than 163kg is non-compliant and will lead to issues regardless or test status or insurance.163kg must be used even in 0mph winds. It's the law.
If a setup has been installed in Direct contravention of EN14960 there's no level of test our insurance will protect you from the outcomes.
The balance between managing pegging/ sandbagging anchorage and wind speeds is crucial. It's not hearsay, Its physics & you can't beat physics.
Please bear in mind that the Harlow incident, in which a young girl was tragically killed on an inflatable last year, Has had these very issues raised in the trial last year and the HSE have a 100k+ budget to conduct a study into the anchorage of inflatables after mounting pressure from members of permanent.
The court was satisfied that the inflatable involved was tested and insured and the whole incident happened due to the science mentioned above.
Whilst I understand that carrying close to 1 tonne of sand is not practical, It doesn't mean its bollocks. You simply need to think of an alternative or walk away.
The £100,000+ budget the HSE have was funded by a collection of MP's local to Harlow who are determined to pursue health and safety blips within our relatively safe industry.
Some of these MP's are hell bent on an outright ban. We need to work together, harder than we ever have before to ensure safety is paramount in all our set ups and that we don't give them the excuse they are waiting for to come down on us like s ton of bricks.
Do your bit and report those who don't. It's quite simple really.
I've written this in about 5 minutes from memory so if anything is wrong please feel free to correct me and I will edit it.
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