04 December 2024

Hi  

While you might not see us breaking ground this year, we have some behind the scenes photos of our equipments manufacture and construction. So exciting... check this out!

You might have read in the Timaru Courier this week, that we have set the date for the construction of Timaru’s new Caroline Bay playground to early next year around March 2023.

We realised as a committee that, if we were to break ground this year, it would mean the playground would be fenced off to the public right through summer holidays, including carnival and pre-booked events. We felt it was in the best community interest not to do this.

Currently, there's a huge amount of work going on to fabricate the playground's steel. Big thanks to the Playground Centre for sending through these exciting photos to share with you all.

Doesn’t the Lighthouse Look Awesome!

ABOVE: The four story slide tower design, has been customised as a nod to Timaru's iconic Blackett Lighthouse, and in this photo you can see the plans are becoming a reality!

Here are some of the Playground Centre team, inspecting the design, manufacture and construction of the Lighthouse slide tower. They pre-assembled the frame to check the fit and run through safety and quality checks to ensure it is compliant. Seeing the structure at this stage is a massive milestone, and we are so excited to share the progress with you. 

As well as pre-fabrication of equipment starting we have also received our first fully detailed construction drawings for the full playground. These are being carried out by playground design specialist Creo Ltd and turn our community-led concepts into working detail. The image below shows a page of the lighthouse - it's one of 92 working drawings that Creo is finalising for us.

Choosing materials that provide lasting investment and striking the best balance between up-front cost and long-term maintenance costs

We are balancing up-front investment in the best quality products with the potential long-term costs of maintenance and potential component replacement. This will provide value for the community now and in the future.

We have chosen the Playground Centre's premium coating option "HURRICANE GALV" to avoid corrosion of our steel and the bubbling, chipping and fading colours.

‍Here is an example of a playground in Timaru, where it looks like powder coating has been applied directly to the black steel. You can see how the paint has bubbled away and the steel is rusting. 

We want to make sure that this dosen't happen at the new playground. All the steel work in our playground will be galvanised and in some cases powder coated on top of the galvanising.

Our black steel is cleaned and then immersed in hot dip galvanizing tanks to give it complete protection inside and out. We can also choose to power-coat it to add pops of colour in the playground. 

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To ensure the highest quality in our feature lighthouse the next step is to de-assemble the tower and send the fabricated steel off to be dipped in a bath of molten zinc - a process called hot dip-galvanising. This helps to protect the steel from moisture, corrosion, rust - which is key in a salt zone like the Caroline Bay Playground.  

The primary materials of galvanised steel are; zinc and steel is 100% recyclable. The raw materials of both zinc and steel are natural although they go through quite the process to get to the state they are used. After galvanising the inside and outside, the frames are cleaned up, removing sharp zinc deposits before being powder coated, a 3 step process.

‍In these photos you can see the lighthouse has been pre-assembled, before being broken down and going off for hot dip galvanising.

Playground Centres experience and understanding of the requirements ensures we have a playground that is strong, safe and compliant. Designing public playgrounds to meet the NZ standards has been described to us a mine field of information. The governments Standards Book is 270 pages long. It details things like best practices, engineering loadings, entrapments, fall zones, free space etc. 

Even with this level of care there can still be some minor issues picked up during manufacture and installation that need to be remedied. So for the bespoke equipment The Playground Centre who designed the towner, work closely with their local suppliers to ensure the best level of control to oversee the quality, compliance and timelines for the equipment.

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It is so exciting the see the equipment, (which we ordered earlier in the year), is in progress. Some is coming from around the world, and the bespoke items like the Blackett lighthouse, shipwreck, sea rescue flying fox and mokihi seesaws are being made in New Zealand.

We are looking forward to sharing with you details on the slides manufacutre next - stay tuned for this exciting milestone!

Regards

CPlay Team

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CPlay - Caroline Bay Playground Upgrade Project
By the Community for the Community

Visit our website: www.cplay.co.nz
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