Our girls are now 14 & 12 and Steve and I FINALLY agreed to let them have a trampoline. They have wanted one forever but we've never had one because, frankly, I don't want to deal with broken limbs. Also, we get a ton of wind where we live & I don't want to have to chase a tramp down in our neighbor's yard.
I recently saw on
pinterest where people had sunk their trampoline into the ground & I thought that was a brilliant idea. So after Steve & I
read up about it and watched youtube videos on how to install them, we thought maybe we should give it a try. It was a lot of work but worth it & so far it's worked out great. Here's how we did it...
First, we assembled the frame of the trampoline, then Steve & his dad attached 2x4's and aluminum sheeting to the outside of it...
Next, we decided where the hole should be dug...
We hired a man to come and dig out our hole for us. Asher was a little excited about having a backhoe in our backyard...
The morning our hole was dug, he watched every minute of it from our living room window. He was in heaven...
The bottom of the hole was leveled and the walls went directly up. The inner bottom of the hole was then sloped inwards to allow for proper drainage...
After the frame was placed in the hole on cinderblocks, we backfilled it with dirt to the top of the aluminum sheeting on the outside of the frame (leaving about 6 inches at the top for airflow) and lined the inner walls with dirt but didn't come up quite as high as on the outside.
A smaller hole was dug towards the middle of the larger hole and a bucket was inserted into the ground. Rock was then placed around it to hold it in place and to allow for drainage. After that, Steve placed a hose in the bucket and the other end was secured to our trampoline. Now, if we do happen to get a lot of rain that doesn't evaporate quickly, we can hook up a pump to the hose and suction out the extra water. ...
Then we began the laborious task of inserting 80 springs into their holes and attaching them to the jumping mat...
As you can see, Asher was a big help...
The finished project!...
The kids LOOOVE it and it's great exercise. Well worth the time and investment!
