FALMOUTH – A volunteer group claimed Tuesday that it set a record for the world’s largest sand castle.

A surveyor at 1 a.m. measured the castle at 29 feet, 3 inches, which surpasses the existing record of 28.96 feet set by a group in Finland in 2000, said Ed Jarrett, who organized the event.

Documentation will be sent to the Guinness Book of Records, which will determine whether the castle makes the record book.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Jarrett said. “We didn’t realize what we got into until we tried doing it.”

The idea of building a huge sand castle sprung from a town committee that wanted to encourage more people to use Falmouth Community Park, which the town built four years ago on Winn Road in West Falmouth.

Volunteers first tried to set the record last year, but gave up at 22 feet. This year they enlisted the help of John Northrop, a structural engineer, to design the castle.

Beginning June 2, volunteers built a wood frame in sections, filled it with sand, packed it down and sprayed water over it. They used ladders and scaffolding and formed a bucket brigade to dump the sand as the castle rose from the ground.

They recruited a company to donate sand, another to contribute the wood and a security company to stand watch every night to prevent vandalism. When the project was complete, the wood frame was removed, leaving a cone-shaped, hard-packed castle with a spire on top.

Northrop is more accustomed to building hydroelectric power plants than working in the sand but said the castle had its own set of nuances, what with 100 volunteers, 900,000 pounds of sand and fickle weather.