Safety Archives - Blast Zone Blog

Mail Zone: Setting Up on a Slope, Financing, and Bouncers for Adults

September 14, 2015January 10, 2018 BlastZone 1 Comment

Kristin Asks:

Hi, I ordered the Spray n Splash inflatable park and was planning to use it in my backyard for a pool party today. However, we have a slight slope in the yard going down, at about a 10% grade. Is this OK?

Blast Zone:

Though a level surface would be ideal, we understand that this is not possible for everyone. Because your slope is not too extreme, it should be fine. We do recommend setting the slide up so that the water does not pool up against the base of the slide. It is better to have the outer rim of the splash area to be downhill from the slide.

Please use common-sense safety practices at all times. If your location seems unsafe for any reason, do not set up your inflatable there! This would include unsafe slopes, loose soil, obstructions, power lines, bear caves, volcanoes, etc.

Grass is idea for setting up an inflatable — Grass is ideal for setting up an inflatable.

Luke Asks:

Do you do financing, lease to own, to individuals? Or is that only for businesses? I am really interested in financing one of your bounce houses.

Blast Zone:

We do offer financing through our third party financing partner, Leasestation. Financing is only available for commercial orders and you can apply online, directly through our website. When you submit your application, be sure to apply for the total amount that you’d need to cover all of your equipment costs. For example, if you’re interested in an inflatable that costs $2,000.00 and you also want to add accessories that cost an additional $300.00, you would want to add in the cost of the accessories from our website to the total of the inflatable to get your total equipment cost. If you are unsure of your pricing, give us a call and we’d be happy to help out.

At this time Leasestation is only offering financing to businesses, so you would require an EIN or tax ID in order to be approved. If you are planning to start up a new business and do not yet have an EIN, you can apply for one online. It takes about 15 minutes to complete the application. You can still apply without your EIN initially, but the application will be pending until an EIN is provided.

You should find out instantly whether you are approved for financing or not, but if you do not get an immediate response, it may mean that Leasestation needs a little more information from you in order to proceed. Once you have been approved for financing, give our sales team a call at 877-889-4685 and be sure to mention that your order is being financed. Once you’ve decided on the items you want and have placed an order, our sales team will transmit your order to Leasestation so that they can complete the terms of your financing. Once you have signed off on all terms, Leasestation will fund your order and your equipment will ship.

Ramona Asks:

Can adults use any of your bouncers? I want something that I can play with my kids in.

Blast Zone:

Smaller adults weighing 100 lbs or less may use most of our inflatables, but we recommend exploring our commercial grade inflatables for items that can be used by most adults and children alike. While our home use inflatables do feature a 100 lbs per person weight capacity, most of our commercial grade bouncers can support users up to 250 lbs each, with a minimum weight supported of 200lbs.

It is important to evenly match players, because a large adult sliding, tumbling, or jumping on top of a smaller child is a potentially unsafe situation (link to evenly matched players article). If you intend to play in the inflatable with your child, avoid roughhousing, and do not slide with your child in your lap.

In our Blast Zone Mail Zone series, we answer good questions submitted by you, our great customers. Pardon us if we repeat ourselves occasionally. Some questions are asked frequently, and worth answering more than once!

Blast Zone appreciates your questions. If you’d like to submit a Mail Zone Question, please email us at mailbag@blastzone.com. For immediate assistance, feel free to call us at 877-889-4685, or email us at service@blastzone.com

Commercial Inflatable Regulations by State

July 15, 2015January 9, 2018 BlastZone 1 Comment

As a business owner, or the operator of a “public” inflatable device, there are a lot of considerations: Safety, Insurance, Market Demands, Pricing – the list goes on. These do not apply exclusively to Inflatable Rental Companies, Indoor Bounce Centers and FEC’s – Even institutions like Churches, School and Camps need to be concerned about Liability and Compliance. A “Public” inflatable device should be considered any Inflatable Bounce House, Inflatable Slide, Etc where the public or a congregation has access to the fun. So if your institution or business offers the Inflatable for use by the public, this pertains to you. And while Inflatables are fun for kids, the compliance is definitely for adults.

Most operators of Inflatable equipment rely on the device manufacturers to comply with the various regulations, but ultimately this may be difficult or even impossible for the inflatable manufacturer to provide. Why? Because on top of the various over-arching governing bodies that regulate the manufacturing process, various state and local authorities may have their own regulations. Translation: Your local government may ask you to do some extra stuff above and beyond what the manufacturer does during manufacture. Thankfully, most governing bodies simply adopt the same manufacturing standards that are required of the manufacturer, but some go further.

So who are these various governing bodies that come into play?

First and foremost, is ASTM international, an acronym for American Society for Testing and Materials. This body creates committees to provide manufacturing guidelines for both Commercial Constant Air Inflatables, which falls under the scope of the manufacture of amusement devices, f2374 and a newer standard specific to home-use inflatable devices, F2729.

According to ASTM,

“ASTM standards are voluntary in the sense that their use is not mandated by ASTM. However, government regulators often give voluntary standards the force of law by citing them in laws, regulations, and codes.”

While the ASTM guidelines may not be considered law, sometimes laws will adopt the ASTM standards into a law, making them mandatory. The 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), by the Consumer Product Safety Commission also adopts ASTM incorporates standard F963 Safety Specification for Toy Safety as part of the law.

bounce-house-regulations-per-state — Blast Zone Test Facility often has hundreds of players per day

So the Consumer product safety commission and ASTM pretty much have it covered, right? So what does the operator need to worry about? As an operator, you are still responsible for local and state regulations, which may incorporate these guidelines, and add additional guidelines for you to follow. One important standard when it comes to fire departments is the NFPA 701 , which the National Fire Prevention Association states, “This standard establishes test methods to assess the propagation of flame of various textiles and films under specified fire test conditions.” Most manufacturers who comply with ASTM can also provide a certification that materials comply with NFPA 701.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania also require “type certification,” where the manufacturer must apply for certification on specific structures in order for operators in these states to be able to use the devices in these states. For a comprehensive guide to state-level requirements, BounceHousesNow.com has put together a nice guide by state. To check out requirements for your state, follow their link database.

So to summarize:

Buy from a reputable manufacturer
Make sure your chosen supplier complies with CPSIA and ASTM Standards
Make sure your supplier provides NFPA 701 testing certification, and acknowledges this on the warning label
Check the State regulations List
Check with state and local governing bodies and Fire Departments.

And as always, follow safety guidelines, and Have a Blast!

Inflatable Slide Safety: 1 Rider at-a-time

May 18, 2015January 10, 2018 BlastZone Leave a comment

As part of our ongoing commitment to safety, we are exploring deeper into the general rules of using Bounce Houses and Inflatable Water Parks safely. During this series we explore the “how’s” and “why’s” of the various aspects of safe inflatable use, such as anchoring, evenly matching players, sliding independently and more.

1 Rider at-a-time!

1 Rider at a Time Inflatable Slide Safety

Kids want to test and push past boundaries, and this can lead to stretching the safety rules. If the rules are followed, Inflatable Slides are not only super-awesome, but also safe. However, after a few zips down the sliding lane, and as the play escalates, kids may be tempted to double up, and ride down together, as they look for new and exciting ways to test their boundaries.

Don’t allow this.

Man, we sure seem like wet beach towels over here at Blast Zone, don’t we? Well, for each safety rule, we have reason. And those reasons are, well… for safety. So what are those reasons?

1) The inflatable is engineered for specific user weights. Doubling up these weights will most likely put the rider’s collective weight over the weight the inflatable is engineered for. This could potentially damage your valuable inflatable, or worse, lead to instability on the slide.

2) Bonk. Yup. Bonk. The rider in front is going to stop an instant before the rider in the back. They are going to possibly bonk teeth-to-head, nose-to-head, or tumble over each other. These are not fun outcomes. This could lead to injury, and nothing takes away the fun like tears.

1 Rider at a Time Inflatable Slide Safety Mystic Mountain

With Commercial Inflatable Slides, we’ve witnessed parents sliding down with their kids in their laps. This may seem like a great way to bond with your kids, but the result could be even worse. Check out our piece on Evenly-Matching Players for further insight behind the physics of a large adult landing on a small child, and reconsider this plan before sliding down. In cases with commercial inflatables, often the Inflatable Slide is rated to accommodate adults as well as kids, and many times younger kids like the adults to accompany them to the top. In this case, help your child up, let them slide first, make sure they have cleared out of the landing path, then try to hide your own childish grin as you zip on down.

And please don’t slide head first. Well talk about this later.

So keep it safe, and keep the fun going. Resist the urge to ride down the slide with your kids, and if you see kids “doubling up” use your keen common-sense-parenting skills to break it up. Always make sure kids are following the safety rules, and Have a Blast!

Bounce House Safety: Evenly Matched Players

May 7, 2015January 10, 2018 BlastZone Leave a comment

Evenly Matching Players

Bounce House Safety Kids

Mom wants to go in the Bounce House with the son. Brother wants to bring his sister. Your Nephew wants to bring your dog in. You get the idea… While each of these scenarios may sound fun, it is important that players in a Bounce House or other Inflatable Play Structure are evenly matched in size, age, development, and skillset.

Bounce Houses are inherently safe products, when used properly – they are giant bags of air (insert your own husband joke). Your lawn is a harder surface than your Bounce House, but the lawn doesn’t encourage kids to wrestle and jump directly on top of each other quite as much as the Bounce House may.

Consider the following physical development milestones for kids (we’ll use boys)

1 Year (22Lbs): Crawl and walk with assistance.
2 Years (28Lbs): Walk and Dance
3 Years (34Lbs): Run forward and Jump in place
4 Years (39Lbs): Run in circles, Ride a tricycle.
5 Years (45Lbs): Jump on one foot, do somersaults.

So within one family or one playgroup, you can easily have kids who are capable of doing somersaults, and kids who can barely walk. That Bounce House can have Kids in with weight differences of 40Lbs or more within the common age-rage of 3-10, some doing somersaults, and some struggling to stay upright. Inside an enclosed bouncing environment, you potentially could have a much larger child jumping and possibly landing on a much smaller child who is unable to stand unassisted in that type of environment.

Don’t fret yet.

There are plenty of ways to keep kids safe in the Bounce House, simply by matching them properly and making sure they are playing nicely.

Evenly Matched Bounce House Players Safety

While following the minimum age requirements of 3-Years definitely helps, it is still critical to monitor behavior, and keep kids playing with appropriately matched players. Some Inflatable Combos, like the Blast Zone Sidekick Castle, may have an isolated ball pit area for younger kids, with a Bounce House area for larger, more advanced kids. However, in many instances, it is simply up to the parents/adults to monitor play and keep kids appropriately isolated to avoid contact injury.

A local church has tried a couple approaches with their Blast Zone Bounce House. The first was to find age-appropriate activities for different age groups at an event. In this case, the smaller kids had other activities available. This worked OK, but it is natural for the smaller kids to want to play with the bigger kids, so this is not the ideal situation.

Second, during class-based activities, kids were separated into different groups based on age, which allowed kids to play with other more evenly matched players. This was ideal, as the matching was more official and done automatically.

In family scenarios, it really comes down to common sense parenting:

Evenly Match Sizes
Evenly Match Skillets
Try to keep mismatched players physically separated
When Possible, look at Bounce Houses with separate areas for different activities
Don’t let bigger kids roughhouse with smaller kids
Don’t let people slide together as a unit
If you are bouncing with your kids, be very careful not to fall on top of them.

Blow up the Bounce House, Keep kids evenly matched, monitor play habits, and HAVE FUN!