Pallets are a very useful resource for a variety of reasons that make sense in the creation of amazing play spaces. This little blog piece will aim to unpack some of the considerations we usually suggest to practitioners, be they early years, OSHC or schoolteachers, when seeking, using and managing pallets in play spaces.
Preliminary Considerations
As a resource, we (The Outsiders) often default to recommending pallets as a resource for a variety of reasons including:
Pallets are readily available and you will often be thanked for taking them off someone’s hands!
· The Price Is Right: Pallets can usually be sourced either for free, or very cheap. Thus, subject to your time, and possibly a trailer, they are kind to your resource budget. In addition to budget, free items are much easier for practitioners to give wholeheartedly to the play space, and when in the future one breaks due to high use it does not cause great woe, and the practitioners generally find it far easier to let children experiment, construct and deconstruct far more.
Construction often leads to deconstruction as playgrounds evolve and change…
· Space Formation: Pallets are phenomenal for creating instant play cues in the forms of nooks, crannies, hidden corners, and secret spots. These sorts of spaces are critical in a good play environment and pallets allow practitioners to turn an open sterile space very easily into a warren of potential liminal play conducive to narratives, imagination and creativity.
A quiet “nook” where narratives thrive…
Workable: Ideal pallets for a play space are pine. This makes them easy for amateur carpenters to work with. This includes adults creating aforementioned nooks and crannies, and children wielding tools for the first time. Pine ensures manageable hammer and nail work and experimentation with saws, hand drills and chisels.
Soft pine pallets make it a lot more feasible for children to use tools effectively…
Sustainable: Look this is usually more of an adult agenda than a kid’s one. However, for those looking for more meaningful and authentic ways to include sustainability in their program, often when using pallets (particularly soft pine ones), you are giving the item a second lease on life as opposed to a trip to the dump. Adult agenda or not, holistically we can also appreciate that children seeing items repurposed with great outcomes could easily inspire.
Selecting And Prepping Your Pallet
Selecting pallets seems like it would come down to whatever is available but there are absolutely some key things to look for.
Pallet versatility makes them amazing for pop up play spaces…
1. First and foremost, many sites in Australia (including sites owned by the Department of Education) will have restrictions on bringing treated timber onto school grounds. CCA, an arsenic treatment to protect wood from white ants is the primary concern. These restrictions are not spoken of as much but are akin to asbestos containing materials. A neat hack is to seek out “Heat Treated” pallets (heat being the protective element as opposed to a chemical). Heat Treated pallets usually have a very clear a recognisable stamp which includes the letters HT. Our general advice is if in doubt don’t use it as you would hate to bring scrutiny on an entire playground due to one oversight.
An example of Heat Treated stamp…
2. Next is to prep it for use in the play space. This step will vary greatly depending on your space, your age range of children, and your propensity for risk taking amongst the children. Very obvious hazards to remove are hang nails, especially rusted ones and excessively splintered wood (particularly as this effects structural integrity). The need to sand or not sand is a grey area… Some do and some don’t and there is really no answer and it usually comes down to one’s fear of splinters. If sanding is going to be included in your risk management this is actually a process often quite enjoyed by the children!
This pallet has been modified with the sole purpose of climbing and has thus been placed where there is soft fall…
3. In regard to etiquette it is always good to reach out and ask for permission to take pallets rather than pick them up. Some pallets are actual property and distributors pick them back up for use so missing pallets can be a headache for some businesses. Untreated soft pine, or heat treated pallets however rarely fall into this category and often will be given with a smile as you may have saved someone a trip to the dump. Asking also allows you to ask for more in the future, build community connections (which may be a framework agenda), or even remove the grey area of whether a pallet is treated timber or not.
Planning For Play
Asking how to set up pallet structures in a play space is quite literally like asking how long is a piece of string. If there was a set answer, the creative capacity and variability of pallets as a resource would be lost so get your creative juices flowing and experiment. Some key points to consider are:
1. Think about those nooks and crannies discussed earlier. How can pallet structures best be laid out to become inviting a little corner that play frames evolve from?
2. How can the existing space be incorporated as more than just an afterthought? Are there existing bushes, trees, stairs, gradients that can be harnessed to improve the play value?
Pathways and places to explore…
3. Make your pallets moveable. This was something we ourselves learned through trial and error but fixing structures into the ground ensures their adaptive qualities are limited. Movable structures ensure savvy and engaged practitioners can reinvent the space, honing in on play trends and themes, areas of high use, areas of low use, cramped areas etc. Changing spaces where children are likely to play for many years is also a significant benefit.
4. Be aware of the Australian Playground Standards. As guidelines, and with loose moveable structures there are grey areas in how strictly pallet construction needs to adhere HOWEVER to work in grey areas one needs to be able to expertly talk the talk. Definitely be aware of pallets presenting as ladder (palings running horizontally), entrapments, heights and soft fall requirements etc. Playwork spaces can use processes such as Risk Benefit Analysis, and Dynamic Risk Assessment but the team does need to understand these processes beyond the paperwork.
Overall pallets are an accessible, affordable and versatile resource limited only by the imagination and creativity of practitioners and children, or the lack of basic knowledge pertaining to regulations and playground requirements. Hopefully this little piece has been informative in inspiring the former and answering the latter.
Angus Gorrie