Rubber tire mulch - yay or nay?
I've heard plusses and minuses on both, with the minuses that are consistently mentioned being environmental. I want to know if it's going to stink more than year one, or give me cancer if I'm surrounded by rubber mulch on my patio.
We did try it on one of our front trees....3 small bags. It looks great and you cannot even tell it's rubber. We also did a blower test and the regular mulch seemed to be lighter than rubber.
All opinions welcome!
My parents did rubber mulch in the kid's play area - she does in-home daycare, plus for the grand kids. I talked to them about it because I was thinking about doing it around our playset and some other areas in our yard. I decided against it.
This is from a point of view of kids playing or people walking on it.
Pros
1. Never have to remulch and it hasn't lost it's color in the 4 years they had it.
2. Much softer for the kids to walk and play on vs wood.
3. Expensive up-front, you'll quickly save long term.
Cons
1. Dosn't retain water, so if you're doing around landscape, it won't retain water for the plants.
2. It does get a little warm in the hot summer months. They hose it down to cool it down.
3. It stunk for a while.
4. They expanded the play area and when they tore up grass around it they found a bunch of ground up rubber pieces, more than likely pieces that flew out and mowed over or tiny pieces that got knocked/blown over into the grass.
5. It blows around and moves around pretty easy in the wind so it mounds up and they have to re-flatten it.