In this blog post, we will give you a quick guide to the safety of hiring an inflatable, we will keep it nice and short so we don’t bore you with all the ins and outs of the detailed regulations! So let’s begin…
Here is a quick guide to what any bouncy castle hirer should have in place to be offering inflatable hire as a service:
- Insurance – even though it isn’t required by law it is the best practice that all hirers should have public liability insurance with the minimum being 5 million.
You can download a copy of our insurance certificate here - insurance-certificate.pdf
- Test Documents – all inflatables must be tested to EN14960. This is the British Safety Standard enforced by HSE. The most recognised testing bodies are RPII and PIPA, these are both carried out by an RPII inspector to ensure the equipment complies with the HSE standard of EN14960. Another form of test is a compliance test to EN14960 which can be carried out by any competent person, however, this is not seen to be the best practice within the industry.
These can be seen on all of our inflatables under the test tab as our website links up to the PIPA database.
- PAT Testing – all electrical goods used for hire or reward must have an electrical safety test, the most common form and widely recognised testing body would be PAT (Portable Appliance Testing). Electrical products being used outdoors must be IP rated to at least IP44.
You can see all of our electrical stafety tests in the form of a sticker on each piece of equipment.
- Method Statement - This is a document that details a step by step guide on how we conduct a set up safely.
You can download our method statement here - method-statement.pdf
- Risk Assessments – as with all activities carried out where children are involved it is best practice to carry out risk assessments. A generic risk assessment is provided by us on every hire and we also carry out a dynamic risk assessment on set up of the equipment to cover any aspects that aren't outlined in the generic risk assessment. It is a legal requirement to carry out a risk assessment.
You can download our generic risk assessments here:
As well as having all the relevant documents outlined above in order, an inflatable hirer must also ensure they set all equipment up in accordance with the safety standard and take into account the best practice within the industry. Below I will point out a few common mistakes some hirers make when setting up inflatables and also explain how we Gedling Bouncy Castle Hire setup to avoid these mistakes.
Any inflatables setup outdoors on hardstanding must be anchored in the correct manner, a few sandbags scattered around the anchor points is an insufficient amount of anchorage and may not prevent the inflatable from being blown away in high winds.
At Gedling Bouncy Castle Hire we only setup outdoors on hardstanding when drilling and bolting is allowed. We secure to the ground by drilling a hole and using 12mm masonry bolts to bolt the inflatable into the ground.
Another common mistake is setting up too close to obstacles. The standard states that there must be no objects within 1.8m of the sides of an inflatable and an area of 3.5m at the front of the inflatable must be clear. Setting up with a castle leaning against a garden fence or similar obstacle would not comply with the standard as it would allow for children to able to fall out the side of the inflatable. If the inflatable was to deflate a child could be injured on objects within the vicinity of the inflatable, not to mention the obvious access route that would be being blocked be the inflatable.
At Gedling Bouncy Castle Hire we avoid this mistake by listing the space required for the inflatables taking into account so customers do not expect us to squeeze our inflatables into gardens against fences etc.
The next common mistake is ceiling height, some hirers often don’t take into account how tall their inflatables are when working indoors. We have seen this many times and it is very unsafe to force an inflatable up indoors where it doesn’t fit.
At Gedling Bouncy Castle Hire, we know exactly how tall each and every one of our inflatables is this gives us the ability to check whether they will fit into venues, we have also gone the extra mile and have started to collate a database of venues in and around Nottingham taking note of the venue dimensions so customers can find directly from our website whether their desired inflatable will fit into the venue they have.
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