Starting round 2 of backyard swing sets - this time for grandkids. When my kids were young, I was able to find a good kit that came with plans, hardware and the swings, rope ladders etc and only required that I buy the lumber, do the carpentry dork and assemble. It was great. Built a clubhouse/swing set combo that lasted 20 years. It’s gone now and I can’t seem to find a similar kit with quality parts.
My needs are different now since instead of everyday use it will likely be every couple of weeks on weekends. Anyone have good suggestions for reasonably priced, durable high quality kits. Most of the reviews I’ve read suggest that the lumber that comes with today’s kits is garbage and hardware is often missing. The play sets that you can get from the retail outlets are either total junk or ridiculously expensive. Any ideas? I’m not fixated on wood, need 3 swings and maybe a sliding board. Climbing accoutrements would be a plus but are not essential (particularly since I have an adult sized obstacle course in my backyard that kids could grow into).
Eons ago, we looked at Rainbow Playsets and drooled… They were considered top notch and out of our reach at the time. We ended up getting a kit (just the hardware and the plastic parts) from a lumber store and supplemented it with quality, non-pressure treated lumber from said lumberyard. The kits usually have good instructions on what lumber to buy. Ours had 2 swings, monkey bars, covered fort, and a looong slide. I see that Rainbows are still going strong and get decent reviews. That said, you will only need this play set for 5 or so years until they all graduate to the big one. Have fun!
Lol, you haven’t seen my backyard American Ninja playground. Like Bunsen said, the kid sized stuff will only be needed until grandkids grow into the other stuff.
Bunsen, that’s exactly what I did for my own kids. Took me a weekend to do the cuts, drilling and assembly. The Rainbow stuff is great looking. Expensive - but so are Creative Playthings, Superior and the like.
We got a set from Costco online - I think it may actually have been a Rainbow. It’s held up really well the past 10 years with zero maintenance on my part. I’m in AZ though so it’s very dry - in wetter climates you’d need to do the usual wood maintenance.
Pulled the trigger. Bought a heavy duty free standing Swing/sliding board/climbing platform set from Lifetime Swingsets. Great reviews, had the features I wanted, very reasonably priced and free shipping from Amazon Prime!
Costco, of course. Three swings, two slides and a wall to climb. Pricey but if divided by number of years and grandchildren expected to use it, practically priceless
I looked at Costco and ended up not buying there because while they do carry some Lifetime products, they didn’t carry the particular model I had decided was the right model to match all my criteria. This was a very tortured process for me, lol. I spent several weeks reviewing company websites, looking at online reviews and visiting retail outlets including big box home improvement stores, big box toy stores and boutique manufacturers retail outlets. My needs and desires were not exactly typical.
First, I have in my backyard massively overbuilt playground gear that I use for my own training and fun as well as for training clients. 8 ft high 12 ft long monkey bars, a 12 ft high A frame with a cargo net on one side, a ladder on the other and a yardarm with gymnastic rings and a climbing rope, and 2 pull up bars one 6 ft high and one 8 ft high. All are built with 6x6 wood beams and 2x12 planks. The units are massively strong and will last forever. So what I was looking for was something to bridge the gap from toddler age to the point that my grandkids are large enough to play on what I already have.
Because the play set is going to be used by grandkids on weekend visits and because of practical space limitations given the other stuff in my backyard, I didn’t want to spend a fortune either on a very large and elaborate unit. If it was going to be for my own kids with daily use and I didn’t already have the other stuff, I would have felt differently. So I set a limit of $1000 plus or minus a couple of hundred bucks as the price point.
The toughest decision was whether to get a wood or metal unit. In today’s cultural aesthetic, we all want wood for its look and “natural” feel. The dilemma though was to find a wood product in my price range that wasn’t junk. So much of what’s out there, even going up into the $1500-1800 range is made with flimsy materials. And the reviews online are replete with horror stories of kits arriving with broken and split boards, missing pieces, wood failing after a few seasons. What I found was that to get a high quality unit in my price range, I would be limited to a basic 4 leg transverse beam 3 position swing set if I stuck with wood. Plus, with the experience of having built a play set for my kids years ago and more recently my training playground, I wasn’t thrilled with adding even more wood structures that require seasonal maintenance and care. So I started looking at metal units.
So much of the metal units out there - particularly from big box chain outlets - are also flimsy and undersized. But then I stumbled on Lifetime playsets. Substantial dimensions and specs so the units will be durable and maintain their utility through a broad age range as kids grow, universally hundreds of great online reviews, low maintenance, and a broad variety of models to meet whatever your desires are of how elaborate a rig you want. They make a 3 position swing set with the transverse beam 9 1/2 ft high (plenty of room for kids to grow), a platform 5 ft high (just the right height to supervise young ones), a climbing wall on one side of the platform and an 8 ft slide on the other. And priced at $699 on Amazon Prime with free delivery scheduled for a specific day and 3 hour window. Boom, perfect for my needs.
I am about to go on this research venture, so I appreciate these posts. I am a tortured, detailed, analytical decision maker…which is why I have purchased 35 colors of Sherwin William sample paints in the last 2 weeks and can’t pick out the 3 I need…
I need a grandkid swingset, too. Will be used a couple of times a week, kids age 3 and 0. I try to remember the best $60 I ever spent was on a cheap, tiny KMart swingset. It was all I could afford at the time, and my kids got so much use from it. My decorative standards and budget are higher now, so off I go to look at Lifetime playsets. Thanks for your detail @MiachelNKat !
Once upon a time decades ago, we bought my sister a Sears swingset and H and my brothers and a BIL put it into their back yard. They enjoyed playing on it and left it when they moved. It was still intact. They used LOTS of concrete to make sure the base was very stable and not going to move AT ALL. As I recall it was very cheap–maybe under $200 or so. My BIL refused to have anyone read the instructions so they actually installed it upside down, but it still worked OK, was just a bit lower than it was supposed to be.
@sryrstress, there are so many options out there, so many companies to choose from, that you really need to apply some filters so you don’t feel like a pinball bouncing around. If I were to list the filters I think are most important, they would be: budget, wood vs steel, the features you want and do it yourself assembly or vendor on site assembly. Related to budget, particularly if you want wood, are whether you want top tier quality of materials and systems of joining the parts or whether you would be satisfied with second tier and features. Within a given quality tier, at a given price point, you’re going to get basically the same features. Within a given quality tier and price point, you will have the same degree of robustness of materials and parts across the manufacturers. Somewhat of a wildcard, again particularly with wood units, is whether you are going to assemble it yourself or have the vendor assemble it for you.
When looking at wood sets, here’s what I discovered. The kits offered by big box home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowes, are basically the same quality and features at a given price. Second tier but probably quite serviceable although the online reviews of the manufacturers (all of whom have direct order websites too) have complaints of defective materials (cracked or warped wood), missing hardware and delays in getting replacements. The biggest area of complaint, though, appeared to be where a customer elected to purchase onsite assembly. Because these are essentially “mail order” purchases, even from the local big box home improvement stores, the subcontractors used for onsite assembly are not “company technicians” who know the product or who have any vested interest in the quality of the job they do. Consumers report a wide range of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the assembly and installation experience.
In contrast are the top tier companies who maintain their own brick and mortar showrooms. In my area, Creative Playthings and Superior are two of them. There, you can see fully assembled units, the quality of materials and parts is noticeably higher, the models seem more robust and assembly and installation with technicians familiar with the product and who have an ongoing relationship with the local vendor is included in the price. But the price is also very much different. A model that costs you $1200-1800 from a second tier “mail order” vendor or company may cost $2800-3300 for the same features at the top tier manufacturer with local showrooms.
I’m a lot like you in that I immerse myself in an investigatory and analytical process when making certain kinds of decisions. When it came to my adult playground in my backyard, I even went so far as to design the structures myself and hire a local carpenter to build to spec because the cost of what I could find commercially that met my criteria was just exhorbinant. When it came to the swing sets for my grandkids, I was making myself nuts and could see myself gravitating to the very expensive top tier wood units until I stepped back from the precipe and rethought what my objectives really needed to be, lol.
Have fun!