How to Anchor a Trampoline on Concrete, Artificial Grass or Sand (and Why You Should Reconsider the Concrete)

What CPSC says about hard surfaces

The Outdoor Home Playground Safety Handbook: "Do not install home playground equipment over concrete, asphalt, or any other hard surface. A fall onto a hard surface can result in serious injury to the equipment user." Its trampoline guide separately says to place the trampoline away from structures, trees and other play areas, and that enclosures can help prevent falls off. A net reduces the chance of a child landing outside the frame; it does not make it impossible, and a child who does will land on whatever is there. The honest advice for a slab is to move the trampoline to the lawn. If the slab is the only flat ground, the rest of this page is how to do it as safely as the surface allows.

Concrete and pavers

What does not work: sandbags on the legs (a gust that lifts a 15 ft frame lifts 40 lb of sand with it), rubber-footed legs alone, and any stake kit. What does: drilling the slab and setting masonry anchors (sleeve or wedge anchors with an eye, from a hardware store; we do not cover them as products) at each leg, then running the trampoline maker's straps from the base tube to the eyes. ACON's and Jumpflex's kits supply the straps; the auger is replaced by the masonry eye. Pavers set on sand are worse than a slab: an anchor set into one paver lifts the paver. Drill through to the base or move the trampoline. Either way, the frame legs on concrete need a rubber pad under each foot so the galvanizing does not wear through, and the pit-edge problem of an in-ground trampoline is the same one: surround the frame with something soft.

Artificial grass

Turf sits on a compacted aggregate base. Cut a small cross in the turf at each anchor point, screw the auger through the cut into the base and the soil beneath, strap the leg, and lay the flaps back. The auger's hold depends on what is under the turf: a deep compacted base holds well, a thin base over clay behaves like clay. Check the tension after the first wet week. Turf itself is not protective surfacing under CPSC's definition (it is a carpet over aggregate), so the surround rule below applies.

Sand and loose soil

Backyard Discovery's stake guidance is the plain version: anchors want solid soil or clay, not loose soil or sand. In sand a U-stake pulls out by hand. Use the longest auger you can drive, a strap over the base tube, one at every leg, and accept that the hold is seasonal: recheck after rain and wind. A beach-lot trampoline is the case where an in-ground pit with a retaining wall (TDU includes one) is the durable answer, because a frame inside a wall does not need the sand to hold it.

What goes around the frame

Whatever the anchoring, the ground within the net's fall radius should not be pavement. The handbook's 6 ft rule and loose-fill depths are written for playground equipment, and loose fill cannot go on concrete; the surface that can is a rubber tile with a published fall-height rating, laid around the frame on the slab. PlayFall's 1.75 in tile is rated to 4 ft, which covers a fall from a 3 ft trampoline edge and not a fall from a 6 ft net top. That is the ceiling of what a slab installation can offer, and it is why the lawn is the better answer. Surfacing in general: best playground mulch and surfacing.

The parts that fit

The ordinary-ground method is on how to anchor a trampoline; the kits on best trampoline anchors.