We’ve recent had another one of our bouncy castles out. If you know anything about me and bouncy castles from reading my website then you’ll know I am bounce mad 😀 or should I say the kids are at least anyway! The great thing about bouncy castles are they keep the kids entertained for hours, if we jump on too they get crazy excited, they can play games on them, and yes unfortunately I have given in to the fact they can eat on them.
This presents new problems when the kids have their friends over. The food goes from solid to solid plus tomato sauce, or something else sticky. I absolutely draw the line at drinks but somehow I come to the bouncy castle the next morning and it’s sticky.
So I had to devise a serious clean up plan, after all, both my bouncy castles nearly take up the whole garden 😀 Here’s how I go about getting them cleaned up:
Hoover down your bouncy castle
Use a decent cordless hoover if you can. It’s much easier to get up on your bouncy castle without the constraints of a power lead. If you don’t have one then you’re going to need a hand assuming your castle his big enough 😀 Your friend will hold the hoover while you run about like a maniac trying not to fall over, hoovering the crisps out of the cracks in the corner 🙂
The other option is to try to lean over with the extension but it’s hard to see what you’re doing, harder still to actually pickup all the bits.
Wipe off
I use age old wet wipes. They work so well removing anything sticky, If it’s really bad though I’ll wrap a damp tea towel around my broom and give it a going over with that first. The hardest bit as always is getting in between the gaps. You really have go to press in and find the nasty stuff 😀 – Also the footprints can be a bit stuck on from drying overnight, they do need a good going over otherwise the whole process wasn’t worth it!
I easily go through a whole pack of wet wipes on my big bouncy castle. This is naturally the problem with kids playing and getting excited but there’s no way you would stop them having this much fun.
Disinfect
Whatever your preferred disinfectant there’s no question this is a more important time than ever to give the whole thing an entire blast. I like your good old household name disinfectant. I’m not naming names, there is no point. You have one in the cupboard and if it kills 99.9% of all known germs then it’s probably the same as mine 😉 If I’m honest I pay far more attention to the height of the kids hands and below.
I leave the disinfectant for half an hour before I do anything, ideal little break with a cup of tea.
Wipe down again
This time I don’t waste a thing. I use old clothes, old tea towels, or an old towel. Whatever I can find to dry the bouncy castle out as much as is possible. You could potentially do the same for cleaning down but I have huge success cleaning with wet wipes (and that goes for just about everything).
Setup heaters to dry off
This is the handy tip of the day with regards to cleaning your bouncy castle and subsequently not having any mould issues. The dry down is the most important phase. I position a couple of blow heaters with separate power reels. They draw so much electricity that they would literally melt the cable if not for the fuse which will pop first. Aim at the base corners. If you don’t have blow heaters then use what you have – table top heaters, patio heaters, even turn on the wall mounted heaters if you have them.
Put them on a plank of wood a little way from the bouncy castle as to not cause any melting when they are pointed at the internal corners. This dries them up nicely and very quickly. I would say this takes about an hour and I am there with a tea in hand making sure I don’t burn the thing down or one doesn’t get kicked over. Electric heaters are very dangerous and this must be monitored.
Repeat it all again in a couple of days time
Keep this up and you’ll find that unless one of the kids bazookas you, this will come down to an hour or so chore. The longest still being the drying time. What I do if one of the kids does something unreasonably messy is get them to chip in. Keep a clean towel and make sure they wipe their feet on the way in. Set them in a routine and you’ll be surprised just how quickly they’ll remember to follow this. The problem of course being when the untrained family member’s kids come over 😀
How to remove mould from your bouncy castle? Pressure washer or chemicals?
Let’s assume you’ve left the bouncy castle out for a while. You will start to see a build up of algae and mould. There’s two ways to tackle this. One is an algae remover, the other which I prefer much more is to get out the petrol pressure washer and pressure washer detergent, blast it clean. If you have a cordless pressure washer then this will work to but I prefer the extra power. Since the lance has a really long hose connected it doesn’t make much difference in terms of manoeuvrability.
The key to blasting down your bouncy castle comes down to drying after. Both ways will clean it no problem, but the pressure washer really will soak it in.
Follow these tips on how to clean a bouncy castle and you’ll be in a good place to keep the kids bouncing clean this Summer and if this drives you crazy perhaps take a look at these other ideas for fun in the garden with kids 😀
