Safety Tips: Secure Your Bouncy Castle
Bounce house injury is a real thing. Those accidents happen quite often, we saw the same news from time to time. According to a study done by CHOC, bounce house accidents has increased since 2000.
A bouncy castle, also called inflatable castle or bounce house, is an inflatable recreation toy made from nylon or PVC, majorly played by kids (but adults are also OK). It is air inflated by a blower through a long inlet tube and air pressure balanced with a short outlet tube. Due to its nature, an inflatable product, such as a bounce house, inflatable slide and other inflatable interactive games, should be carefully maintained and stored before, in time of playing and after.
Since those inflatable products are made that way and for kids to play, we adults should really pay much more attentions when we provide this type of entertainment.
It is needless to say, securing your bouncy castles before any kids jump on them is very important. Here is a checklist of dozens of do’s and don’ts that instructors and supervisors should definitely go through to avoid any hazard to users.
Weather
Most inflatable bouncer tragedies are due to unexpected gales, so it makes sense to know what is going on with the weather. Here are some advice.
- Never play inflatable castles in a windy day or rainy day.
- Check weather forecast before the event.
- If the weather is about changing, don’t hesitate to abort the fun.
- Avoid boiling hot summer days, if must, prefer open inflatable structure than enclosed ones. For example, choosing water slides rather than inflatable jumps.
- It’s fine to play in winter. However, keep kids warm and better yet, move indoor.
Equipment
Sometimes, it’s not the weather to blame, it’s the inflatable equipment themselves.
- Check your inflatable units carefully every time you set up.
- Clean the inflatable bounce house after use. Remove any dirt and rocks.
- If there are leaps, punctures or tears, please repair them immediately or keep them stay put until repaired.
- Tests before uses, especially new equipment.
- Blower fan may also work dysfunctionally, which will cause inflatable to be collapsed or unable to be inflated. If that should happen during playing, instruct and help children exit the inflatable equipment quickly and safely.
Playground
Here are some safety tips when choosing a playground to blow up a bouncer.
- You should set up your bounce house on a soft ground, such like lawn, rather than hard ground.
- If you have to fix your bouncer on a hard ground, such as concrete, please use heavy things to make sure the bouncer won’t budge.
- The ground should be flat, and remove all little rocks and wood sticks.
- Cover a waterproof tarp cloth on the ground to avoid wetting and smudging the bouncy castle.
- Nail all of the tent pegs and stakes firmly into the ground.
- The pegs might not safe enough, so use real cumbersome stuff to anchor the bouncy castle from winds, like sand bags, big rocks or even cars.
Supervision
Do not think you have done everything to protect kids and secure inflatables, always double check and supervise consistently while kids are playing on bouncy castles. Here are some safety regulations to apply.
- Always have one adult stand next to the castle and supervise everything.
- Make another person double checks whether all security measures are well done.
- Make sure no keys, jewelry, shoes and other stuff which could possibly hurt people and the bouncer allowed on the bouncer.
- Maintain fine orders among children, limit the number of players and weight at the same time.
- No crazy tricks, such as backflip.
- Teach kids to play the inflatables safely and nicely.
A question was asked recently, “should bouncy castles be banned?”. As a reasonable man, my answer is no. Here’s why, first of all, accidents happen, but nevertheless they are still in a pretty small probability; Secondly, those bouncy castles bring so much fun to kids in their childhood. Thirdly, we are competent to do things that can prevent such incidents.
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