| 912 |
|---|
| surface-mount kits, 2019 |
Every bench and table we ship leaves with an installation kit, and the kit tells you how it was mounted. A one-inch bolt kit means the furniture is going onto a finished slab. A one-and-a-half-inch kit means legs are being set into a pour. Surface mount has been the majority since our records begin, and it has widened its lead in every year since.
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The most-mounted benches
Why surface mount keeps gaining
The obvious reason is cost. No excavation, no forming, no waiting on a pour. But the reason it keeps growing is that most furniture now goes into places that already have a surface. Parks are retrofitted more often than built. Plazas are resurfaced. A school replaces its picnic tables on the same concrete pad the old ones sat on. In-ground mounting needs a site that is still dirt, and fewer sites are.
The second reason is that surface mount is reversible. A bench that can be unbolted can be moved when a path is re-routed, taken in for a resurfacing job, or swapped to another park. An in-ground bench is a permanent decision about where people will sit.
When in-ground is still right
Soft ground, gravel, turf, and anywhere there is no slab to bolt to. Sites where theft or vandalism has been a problem, because a set leg is harder to remove than four bolts. Waterfront and slope, where a surface-mounted base can work loose. In-ground has not gone away. It has stopped being the default.
A note on the middle option: ground anchors, which spike a surface-mount base into soft ground, appeared in our orders in 2022 and have shipped every year since. They solve the case where there is no slab but nobody wants to pour one.
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In-ground and freestanding tables
Explore: Surface-Mount · In-Ground · Freestanding
