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10 Tips for maintaining your indoor playground!
Maintaining your indoor playground or trampoline park is crucial for your business success. If you keep a close eye on your play structures, you guarantee the safety of your customers. Moreover, materials last longer and you never miss out on unnecessary turnover because you have to temporarily close your park or part of it. But how can you best maintain a play structure? Below you’ll find ten maintenance tips for leisure entrepreneurs.
The 10 best tips to maintain the play structure of your indoor playground
Well begun, is half done. Successfully maintaining your playground starts with making a planning. Identify which elements your park has at its disposal. Then map out what is needed daily, monthly and annually to maintain it. Once you know this, you can decide which activities you can carry out yourself, which you leave to your employees and which tasks you outsource to experts.
If your indoor playground is installed by ELI Play, you will always receive a manual that describes how to maintain each element in detail.
Start your working day with a check-up round or have an involved and experienced employee do this. During such a daily check you check the condition of all playground equipment in the park. This prevents small defects from becoming costly repairs or having to replace complete elements. Are the nets still in one piece? Are the pipe covers still good? And, does the trampoline still have all its springs? If you have digital elements in your playground, such as ValoJump, it's a good idea to test them at the beginning of each working day. In case of a malfunction, the producer can often do the job remotely.
Check the couplings of the play structures monthly. Most of them are concealed under the covering of elements and therefore visually hidden. Also check whether the walkways in the structures are complete and whether the nets are still installed correctly. Finally, check if the connections in the slides are correct and whether the hanging game elements are secured in such a way that there is no chance of finger entrapment. Check, check, double check!
Not every knot is the same. This is certainly true when it comes to maintaining your nets. Nets are one of the most vulnerable elements of an indoor playground or trampoline park. At the same time, they play a very important role in ensuring the safety of your visitors. Therefore, invest in specialist knowledge and learn the right knotting technique. ELI Play service staff will be happy to visit you for a demonstration on location.
Why should you make it difficult when thinks can be easy? For cleaning most playground equipment, a bucket with soapy water is all you need. Avoid expensive, chemical cleaners and go for a standard all-purpose cleaner from the supermarket. Use a wet cloth to regularly wipe off all areas of the elements you can reach. This is not only good for hygiene, but also looks neat.
An exception to the above rule are crawlers and slides. You only need to clean these with a damp cloth (without cleaning agent) and dry them afterwards. Depending on the humidity at your location, you can then use a special silicone spray. Crawl tubes and slides in indoor playgrounds can become rough because of the high level of humidity in many of the halls. With the silicone spray - available at ELI Play Service - you can let all your visitors glide comfortably again.
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Is something broken in your playground equipment? Then act as quickly as possible. Make an assessment of the safety of your visitors and, if necessary, close off part of your play structure. Don't wait too long with the repair, this will prevent an element from breaking further and possibly having to be replaced in its entirety. If you want to act fast, ELI Play is the place to be. Email pictures of the damage to our service department: an employee will make a repair proposal as soon as possible.
In addition to the daily and monthly check, it is advisable to have an inspection carried out by an expert at least once a year. During this thorough annual check that you can book with ELI Play Service, all playground equipment is checked. The mechanic then draws up a quotation for all major parts that need replacement and for the necessary repair work on, for example, nets, trampolines, pads and paddings.
Cleaning the balls of your ball pool one by one is of course an impossible job. Save time and effort and make use of ELI Play ball pool cleaning. A service employee will then visit you with the special ball cleaning machine with which ELI Play has been successfully cleaning ball pools for more than twenty years. Have the balls freshened up at least four times a year and consider concluding a ball pool cleaning contract.
Last but not least, do not forget to keep a log of all checks, maintenance and repair work you perform or have performed. Every owner of an indoor playground or trampoline park is obliged to do so by law. Tip: also save the ELI Play service reports in the logbook. Should an incident ever occur in your park, it is so good for your liability that you can always prove that you have done everything possible to maintain your playing structure properly and professionally.
Would you like more advice on how to maintain your playground?
ELI Play is happy to support you in maintaining or repairing your playground. Our service team is always there for you. Call us at +31(0)411 745 300 or send an e-mail to service@eliplay.com.