Safety at GatSplat

There are many things that offer a large margin of safety at an indoor field verses an outdoor field. The Astro Turf covering our floors is much softer for sliding on than dirt is. We have no pot holes. No tics, no mosquitoes. No poison oak, no poison ivy. Also our air bunkers are simply filled with a little water to keep them in place. Outdoors, due to the wind, bunkers are conventionally staked to the ground, and there have been numerous injuries by people hitting knees, arms, etc on a stake that is sticking out of the ground.

You will find aht in our facility, we will strictly enforce the use of Barrel Socks on paintball markers. The Barrel Sock does a better job of stopping an accidental firing than a barrel plug, so at Gatsplat, Socks will be required. If you don't have one, we have them for sale for about 5 bucks in our pro show, and if you want to check out the history of the barrel sock, here is a copy of the US Patent!

But besides the obvious control issues that you have indoors, we have taken extreme steps to assure that our field is the safest possible. Let's look at some of the safety aspects you will notice at GatSplat.

• Our Paint
  We only allow our specially formulated paint on our field. Why does that make it safer?? Great Question! It turns out that a paintball that hits you and does not break hurts more than one that does. Assume we threw an egg at you. If it's a raw egg and it breaks when it hits you, it hurts a lot less than a hard boiled egg hitting you. Even if thrown at the same speed. The breaking distributes the energy while a bounce pinpoints the energy into one spot on your body. So all the paint on our field is formulated for an easy break, and to be be non-staining. Your clothes will not come home with pink, orange and green stains. With all the pigment removed - our paint breaks with an easy to wash white fill.



• Chrono Speed of 260
  Chrono speed is the speed at which the paintball leaves the barrel. It is typical for outdoor fields to run a chrono speed of 300 feet per second. Worse than that is fields that don't check the Chrono speeds of the players. We've had people come to play here, and when we checked their guns - they were shooting up to 408 feet per second. And he had played at another field the day before! That is over 100 miles per hour faster than we allow at our field! At our facility we check the guns - both ours and customers guns, to assure they are shooting no faster than 260 feet per second. We not only have a chrono room, we have another Chronograph right on the field. That extra 40, 80 or 100 feet per second makes a big difference when you're the one being hit! And with our specially formulated paint, you still get good breaks, not bounces and less pain!



• Safety Briefing
  We want to make sure that none of the important safety information is skipped over, so using the safety rules of NSERA (the National Sports Entertainment Recreation Association) we created the most comprehensive safety video in the industry. Instead of using one of the generic videos that we could have easily bought, we spent hours composing and shooting our own to highlight the actual fields, air fill systems, and guns the people would be using. If you can't tell.... we're very proud of it. If you want, you can watch it now - just click on this link to The GatSplat Orientation Video.



• Our Refs

We like to think that we have some of the best employees around. While a lot of fields use kids that trade reffing for free play, or paintballs... we actually pay our guys. And a bit better than any other field. Why? Because we demand more from them. Safety is stressed and is their number one concern, but we realize that fun is equally important. We make sure they don't bully our customers. But we make sure they make sure everyone is safe. As an example, the most dangerous thing in paintball occurs when someone takes off their mask while on or near the playing field. If this occurs, our refs will remove that person from the game. And we will take them out of play for a minimum of the next half hour. A repeat violation will have someone banned for the day. We don't want to be harsh... but we must be safe. All rules will be fully explained, and we will demand they are followed - but we will always try to do it in a way that is polite to our customers. And we run more refs per square foot of playing field than any other facility around. It's simply safer to have more trained eyes on the field making sure the game goes well.


• On Field Sound Systems

Sure it's fun listening to music when you play, but we have the sound systems for another reason. Safety. Our head ref on the field has a wireless headset mic that broadcasts over the sound system. That means when they call "Game on" or "Game over - Stop Shooting", everyone can easily hear them. I've played at fields where an airplane going over head was so loud that I could not hear the ref making calls. I wanted to assure that every customer on the field could easily hear the commands... and they can.


• Cameras

Sure... maybe it's a bit over kill, but we have 32 cameras watching the inside of our facility. (Not to mention those watching outside!) These are not to watch our stuff... but yours. I've sold many guns, hoppers, masks, etc to customers that had their equipment stolen at other fields, and I made it a top priority of mine that our facility would be the safest place in town. I have players leave $1000+ guns laying on a table, knowing that 3 different video cameras are watching their gear, even if they aren't. It's just one more thing we've done to give our customers a comfortable peace of mind when playing at GatSplat.


• Climate Controlled

To be honest, paintball is a very safe sport when dressed properly. But many times, Texas paintball players will wear lighter clothing to stay cool, and then the hit of the paintballs can get down right painful! But even more important, is in the heat of Texas Summers, players who dress with enough padding, like heavy sweat shirts, can over heat, and dehydrate - leading to very dangerous health conditions.

Our indoor fields have 40 tons of AC to assure that the field and staging areas are not just out of the summer sun, rain, and wind, but that they are always at a comfortable and safe playing temperature so you never have to worry about heat exhaustion or heat stroke.


• Who are you playing against?

At GatSplat, we use the sound system in the staging area to call games based on level of experience. When you walk in, either as a solo player, in a small, or larger group, we will ask what level of player you are. Then we will assign a colored wrist band to signify beginner, intermediate, or advanced player status. We will call our games based on levels, that way, if you are a beginner player, you don't have to worry about getting mixed in with a bunch of semi-pro players that will just use you for target practice. And if you're an advanced player, you know the other guys out there should be good competition for you.

So your group is always welcome, but even if it's just you, or you and a buddy, we'll group you up with players of equal ability to make sure you have a great time!