Dan Sorino
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Can a swing set be TOO tall??
I plan on building a swing set for my daughter, and I always loved the feel of a good tall swing. I like the long range of motion, the nice glide ... but is there such thing as too tall?
I was planning on going about 14' off the ground with the cross beam .. then I figured, well, let's go with 16' ... hell, let's just go 18'!!
Now I'm second guessing myself, because I started to think of the physics of the swinging motion itself. First off, will "pumping" on the swing even be effective if the chain is that long? Secondly, now I'm picturing a good range of forward/backward movement, but I'm worried that the momentum would die out before the "swinger" reached any substantial height off of the ground.
Let me paint a picture here to help visualise my concerns ... I'm picturing a 6' tall swing set, and imagining that it's going to be very easy for somebody to pump their way up to the point that their head is at, or above the cross beam. I don't even see that being possible for anybody to do that on a 16' swing set.
So is there a point of diminishing return when considering the height of a swing set? If so, what height do you figure would be optimum? Or should I just go for the gusto, and build a 24 footer? Ha!
Please give me some feedback, I'm excited to build this thing tall, but don't want to shoot myself in the foot and have an enormous swing set that isn't any fun to swing on.
Realistically, I'd like to stick with the 14' idea.
I was planning on going about 14' off the ground with the cross beam .. then I figured, well, let's go with 16' ... hell, let's just go 18'!!
Now I'm second guessing myself, because I started to think of the physics of the swinging motion itself. First off, will "pumping" on the swing even be effective if the chain is that long? Secondly, now I'm picturing a good range of forward/backward movement, but I'm worried that the momentum would die out before the "swinger" reached any substantial height off of the ground.
Let me paint a picture here to help visualise my concerns ... I'm picturing a 6' tall swing set, and imagining that it's going to be very easy for somebody to pump their way up to the point that their head is at, or above the cross beam. I don't even see that being possible for anybody to do that on a 16' swing set.
So is there a point of diminishing return when considering the height of a swing set? If so, what height do you figure would be optimum? Or should I just go for the gusto, and build a 24 footer? Ha!
Please give me some feedback, I'm excited to build this thing tall, but don't want to shoot myself in the foot and have an enormous swing set that isn't any fun to swing on.
Realistically, I'd like to stick with the 14' idea.
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Seems to me the goldilocks solution would be best. Not too tall and not too short, would be just right.
I'd like to remind you that if your daughter fell off from the top point of the swing then a shorter one will hurt less. My daughter gave her toy a ride on our swing. She pulled the swing back and as she let go her toy fell off so she bent down to pick it up. The swing carried on doing what swings do and on the return the wooden seat smacked her in the forehead raising a lump about the size of a hen's egg. It's horrible when that happens to your little girl, she did recover and there is no scar. This is only a 7-8 ft swing. The momentum that a tall swing builds up could be much higher so accidents have the potential for being more dangerous. Please keep this in mind.