When you are planning to rent or buy a bounce house for your kid's birthday party, you may plan to place it in your backyard, on your lawn. So here comes the question, will the bounce house kill the grass? how to protect the lawn from a bouncy castle or water slide in hot summer?

How an inflatable bouncer kills your grass?

Some people might think that you put a heavy inflatable structure on the lawn and people jump on it for hours, the pressure will kill the grass. This is not true. The pressure will not kill the grass, the sun will. Well, people may ask how the sun kill the grass, is the grass in other place not always exposed the sunlight? According to our experience and research, most of the damaged grass is killed by high temperature, which is burned by the sun. How so? Before you set up a bounce house, you will place a big tarp on the lawn first, most tarps are dark-colored and absorb heat from the sun, so your grass underneath will be burned by very high temperatures.

Most kids birthday parties are from 10am-6pm, and the giant inflatable will probably be on your grass during the hottest hours of the day. So if you find the grass turning yellow after 6 hours of bouncing fun, don't be horrified. The grass will recover with some heavy watering and possibly some organic fertilizer in about a week. And never leave your tarp on the grass when you take down the bounce house.

However, some people said that their lawn is fine with a bounce house in the same spot for a few days. This could be absolutely be true in some areas such as in cooler temperatures or in the shade without direct heat from the sun. So if you're worried about your grass, you should pick a overcast day to place the bounce house and remove it every few days, watch the sun and try to avoid direct sunlight for extended periods of time. If the grass still get burned, keep watering on the yellow area to save your grass.

Other things to consider about where to set up your bounce house

First, consider the power source. You may need an extension cord to reach your electric plug, and don't wrap the electrical cords around the bounce house or in an area where children will be constantly running, and water the water if you are setting a water bounce house combo or a water slide.

Second, you need to consider a safe location on a flat surface. It don't have to be a lawn, but must be large enough. Before setup, clean anything sharp such as gravel, mulch or sticks, low hanging branches or power lines, remove any toys, garden hoses or yard furniture, and leave enough distance on all sides for kids running around. Here are tips for anchoring a bounce house on the lawn, cement or asphalt.

Third, consider the clean-up when the party is over. For example, you won't want to set up a bounce house on the freshly cut wet grass or right next to a sand pit, because every person that runs through the grass or sand will track some of it onto the bounce house and making the clean-up process much harder. Although this won't hurt the bounce house, but it's better to avoid them altogether if you have the option.

In conclusion, the dark-colored tarp for a bounce house can slightly burn your grass with a few hours of heat absorption from the summer sun, but you can make the grass turn to its green color with some shade and continues watering. In hot summer day with direct sunlight, a bounce house in the same sport of your lawn for a few days will probably kill the grass. By the way, summer day at noon is too hot for the kids to play outside and it's not a good time to set up a bounce house. You may need to find a shaded location to place the inflatable, and in that case, you don't need to worry much about the bounce house will kill your grass.