I Didn't Fully Grasp The Extent Of The Southern Heat Wave

[phoenixx]

my parents keep telling me about this year until a playground down south spontaneously combusted.

Mulch at Arlington school spontaneously combusts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

[emeleel]

I'm speechless. It's bad, oh yeah, it's bad, but I would never have imagined!

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Saw it on the news last night. Pretty freaky.

[theworm[$]]

I just put down 6 bags of mulch!
I don't think it's that hot here though!

[pippadaisy[$]]

I'm still not buying it. Generally for playgrounds they don't put down enough mulch for it to properly compost. Dry enough for someone to flick a butt and let it smoulder? Especially with a filter-less or roll-your-own that wouldn't leave evidence? I find that far more probable.

And the pea gravel is TERRIBLE when kids fall on it. Our school just went from the gravel to the mulch because of all the injuries.

[jgibson2[$]]

Read the article. It wasn't mulch - which is usually already composted - it was wood chips. They put them down too thick, for wood chips. Heavy rain started them composting and the high heat lead to spontaneous combustion. The article also said that the wood chips very likely contained chips of plywood or similar that contain flammable resins or glues.

I can totally see it happening, but pea gravel is NOT the answer. Either use real mulch, FCOL, or maybe use that new stuff made from shredded tires. Lasts lots longer than mulch and shouldn't combust.

[emeleel]

Yep, pea gravel can be very nasty when kids fall on it. I still vividly remember one of my friends in elementary school having to go to the doctor because he fell and *slid* in the pea gravel. He got one piece stuck in and it slid at least an inch into his hand. His mom was the school secretary and had some of those ridiculous fake fingernails that are like two inches long - she couldn't get it out. It was SO gross.

[pippadaisy[$]]

I'm still not clear what happened... I thought it was cheap mulch?


Round here you have three playground coverings: pea gravel, mulch, and tanbark. I am not understanding this "wood chip" idea and the headline says mulch.

[jgibson2[$]]

The article says wood chips. Mulch is either composted, shredded bark of some kind or composted shredded wood (bad idea for a lot of reasons).

Wood chips are the raw product - often left over from taking down trees or limbing them out (think utility company tree trimming). We had tree trimmers down our way during an ice storm and we let them dump the shredded chips all over the neighborhood so they'd keep trimming and we never lost power. Worth it, but it took 2 years and a lot of work to turn the wood chips into mulch. I had to water it and turn it about every 2-4 weeks in warm weather and a couple of times it was smoldering in the center when I went to turn it. LOTS of water to keep it well controlled. If you mixed in some plywood chips or some kind of really high resin wood chips, it would be extremely flammable.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

When I was a kid, we had dirt in our playgrounds. As in the dirt that was there when they built the playground.

[jgibson2[$]]

Dirt isn't the safest surface, but it's got to be better than pea gravel.

[magenta321]

They are clear cutting an area by my parent's house for years now. Even in the winter there is steam coming off of the piles of woods chips. I've heard of this happening with the big wood piles. That's why they have to keep "stirring" them.

We always had dirt on our playgrounds. It would just get dug out under the swings. I don't really see a reason to put down other stuff... unless people are thinking it looks better?

The dirt was fun. When you dug deep enough in the sandbox you'd get down to clay. It was neat to mold things out of "dirt." I also don't remember anyone getting hurt too badly on dirt (although, we all did on the broken asphault on the playground at school, but that's another story...)