Skip to content
Xobi's Water Slides
🛡️ Staying safeASTM F2376 and EN 1069

The rule books

Engineers have written big rule books that say exactly how a slide must be built and looked after. America's is called ASTM F2376; Europe's is EN 1069.Standard Practice for Classification, Design, Manufacture, Construction and Operation of Water Slide Systems, first published 2006 and now at F2376-24, with revisions in progress. It covers the flume, water circulation, start platform, supports, vehicles and termination system, and excludes residential slides, log flumes, constant-elevation lazy rivers and inflatables (those are F2374). About 35 US states incorporate ASTM F24 standards by reference.

📖Tell me more

The rules cover the flume, the water, the stairs, the rafts and the pool at the bottom. Bouncy inflatable slides have their own rule book.

🧭More in Staying safe

Inspectors

The slide checkers

Every year, special inspectors climb all over the slides, check every bolt and ride them, before the park is allowed to open.Every year, special inspectors climb all over the slides, check every bolt and ride them, before the park is allowed to open.
The surprising answer

What hurts people most?

It's not the slides!A Turkish emergency-department study (2005-06, 73 water-park patients) found 31.
WWA, IAAPA and Golden Tickets

Slide clubs and prizes

Water park people have their own clubs: the World Waterpark Association and IAAPA.Water park people have their own clubs: the World Waterpark Association and IAAPA.
Kansas City · 2016

What happened on Verrückt

In 2016 a raft on the world's tallest slide bounced up and a 10-year-old boy called Caleb was killed.Designed in-house by Jeff Henry and John Schooley without a formal engineering process.
Action Park · 1985

What happened on the Cannonball Loop

The straight-up loop slide was so bumpy that riders got bloody noses and lost teeth.The full-vertical looping body slide ran for about a month in 1985 before New Jersey regulators closed it.
Every day

Slide rules for YOU

Wait for "go".Minimum heights, weight windows, one rider or raft in the flume at a time, arms crossed and legs together on speed slides, no glasses or jewellery, lifeguards at dispatch and catch pool, daily pre-opening walk-throughs and an annual third-party inspection where the law requires it.

All of Staying safe →