DIY In Ground Trampoline

We dug a huge 10ft hole on our garden to sink our trampoline,, check out below to see how and why we did it.  

We've had a trampoline since Charlie was young, so close to 10 years now.  Our back garden is an awkward shape so it found a home on our driveway/garden at the side of the house.  It was a huge eyesore and a hazard during stong winds, but the kids love it so it had to stay.  After having Louie the realisation set in that we would be stuck with it for years to come so it was about time to come up with a better solution.

The Idea

I started to look around for ways that i could disguise it and make it safer.  That's when I saw sunken trampolines on Pinterest.  I started to research and realised that if I paid someone to do it, it would cost alot.  I'm always up for a challenge so I spent time looking how I could do this myself. I spoke to Mark about it, he thought i was nuts and wasn't too keen so I said I'd do it myself, knowing full well he would end up helping.

The idea was to dig a huge hole, reinforce the edges with wood and metal sheets and then place the trampoline inside.  We didn't want paving to remain around the edges so would replace part of this with grass and add some slate where the grass wouldn't grow behind the enclosure.

The Start

First we removed the large paving slabs from the section that we would be putting trampoline in to.  We gave these away online to save needing to hire skip.  I measured out a circle the same size as the trampoline, knowing that we could go a little further if needed and then we started to dig.  We put the soil that we moved, onto the paving that we had left in place, this meant that the ground underneath would remain level easier when eventually laying the turf.

The Regret

Soon after the digging had begun, the regret started to sink in and we realised the mammoth task ahead of us with just basic tools and no real knowledge.  The soil was compact and each spade full barely seemed to make a dent. It kept piling up and we thought our only option would be to hire a skip or 2 to take it all away. 

I then realised that most of the soil that we were digging out was top soil so we could use this to raise the border flower beds in our front garden.  But it meant moving the approx 10 tonnes of soil that we had already dug out to another part of the garden using our little buckets and some of the kids old snow sledges.

The Install

Once we had finished digging the hole we realised that the soil was very compact and that even with rain it waw holding well.  We decided that we didnt need to spend money einforcing the sides the sides and moved ahead with putting the trampoline in.

The Result 

We removed the bounce mat and net from the trampoline and tried to place the structure inside.  It only needed a little more digging on one side to make it fit.  Once the metal frame was in all we needed to do was reassemble the other parts.  How hard could it be? We had no trouble when we first bought it. 

We quickly realised that we didn't have the tool for attaching the springs but being the impatient person that I am that wasnt going to stop me crom trying.  We improvised with different tools , the first few were easy but after a short while it became difficult, we grabbed gloves and pulled as hard as we could but the angle, being on the ground was awful  There were just a couple left and we were defeated, it was dark, cold and we were shattered.  Our next door neighbour then offered a solution that sounded bonkers, tie a cord to the loop on the mat and then to the bottom of his electric wheelchair, he would stick it in reverse hopefully pulling the loop closer to the spring.  His wheels were spinning like mad butafter a couple of attempts it finally worked almost throwing him out of his wheelchair in the process.