Providence Ripley – Aquatic Play
As part of a major destination park facility at the new land development, Playscape Creations was contracted to design and construct and aquatic sprayground to meet the needs of the entire new community. Working closely with project designers, Cardno, at the early planning stage allowed us to integrate our products into the available space, while keeping the ‘narrative’ of the setting.
For the older children, we put in place an accessible pad with multiple water features, both in-ground and above ground, providing a huge variety of aquatic play opportunities. On the opposing side of the aquatic zone, we designed a custom toddler zone, suitable for very young children and their carers, with a softly mounded three dimensional surface and central stream that picks up all the water and delivers it to a swirling drain at the base of the pad.
The Stream was a design that was conceptualised by our Industrial Designer, Peter Koch, and was produced in conjunction with civil and hydraulic engineers to calculate feature flowrates along with heights and flow rates across the entire pad, to allow the stream to flow back on itself and mimic a natural watercourse.
This feature was produced with industry experts in concreting and shape forming to ensure that the final product functioned as intended, maintaining a constant flow into the circular drainage point which ‘floods’ periodically just to add another dimension to the play experience.
This ‘flooding’ is created by the use of an air operated ‘shut off’ valve managed by a timer in the return line to the balance tank, producing a back up of water in the return line, eventually filling the entire circular basin at the pad. When the valve then opens, it creates a swirling effect – fascinating children and adults alike.
As is always the case in Aquatic Spraygrounds, water management is of utmost importance. This park has separate balance tanks, one for return water and the other as a 15,000l filtered water holding tank. The plant room consists of two x 3 phase pumps, one constantly pumping water through the automated filtration plant, with self-regulating chlorine and acid dosing, while the other is matched with a VFD to the 18 valve manifold delivering around 12,000l per minute to the interactive water features in the field.
The total construction project was coordinated to match other site works, and while there are many other facilities in the park, none are more popular than the Aquatic Sprayground – making children smile, no matter their age! 🙂
.
