Anchoring & Hard Surfaces:
Unfortunately if the surface type you wish to hire a bouncy castle on is astro, slabs, mono-blocked, tarmac or any other hard surface in an outdoor environment we are unable to setup up the bouncy castle.
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So why can't we set up a bouncy castle on an outdoor hard surface?
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Bouncy castles are required by the health & safety executive and the law to be appropriately anchored down with an equivalent weight of 163kg per anchor point. For grass surfaces this will be accomplished by using 38mm metal anchor stakes hammered into the grass surface. For hard surfaces like slabs, mono-block, concrete, tarmac or any other outdoor hard surface this isn't possible but the requirement for 163kg's of weight per anchor point is still in place.
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Can you not just use sand bags?
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Yes we could but each anchor point would require 7x 25kg sandbags for one of our 12x15 bouncy castles, a total of... 56 sand bags or 1304kg of weight. This would be required to be delivered in a separate van and take around 90 minutes to bring the sand bags on to the setup site.
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1 sandbag per anchor point is NOT suitable, adequate or safe!
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Why does the bouncy castle need to be anchored down with 163kg of weight?
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The 163kg's of weight comes from scientific trials by those who created the EN14960 British standard. 163kg is the exact amount of resistance in KN it takes to break the cohesion between the peg and soil and 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 it's grip.
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163kg is also what pull a 27mph wind has on an inflatable. This is force 5 on the Beufort scale which can be found on the internet as follows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale. Hence those figures being used for safety. Its worthwhile pointing out here that bouncy castles should never be operated in wind speeds that exceed 24mph.
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Anything less than 163kg per anchor point is non-compliant and will lead to issues regardless of any bouncy castle test status or public liability insurance.
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We hope that you have found this post informative and understand that when we say "Sorry we can't setup the bouncy castle outdoor on a hard surface" you now understand the reasons why.