In Ground Trampoline

Once they finished grading on our lot I decided it was time to put in our trampoline. Rebecca and I picked out a spot in the back corner of our yard, furthest away from the street that we could get it and closest to the neighbors that we could get it. We figured that as an older couple they would probably appreciate the noise of children a lot since their home is probably so quiet.

The hardest part was definitely digging the hole. It took several weeks and I tried to just do a little every day with a few really big days of digging. Digging was bad, but I had to wheel all the dirt up the little hill to our front yard. With the wheel barrow full I had to get a running start to make it to the top of the hill and sometimes, at the end of a long day, I wouldn't make it and I would come rolling backward down. So this hole is about 3 feet deep and 38 feet in circumference. In the middle I dug an extra 2 feet down just for a hole for the water to collect in if we get heavy rain or for Nathanael to do extra big jumps (he warned me that he would hit the bottom on it).

After the hole was all dug I figured I needed some type of wall so the dirt wouldn't wear away over time. I looked at a lot of options. I don't know if I did the best thing, but what I did was a metal wire fence with metal fence posts to hold it in place. Then a pond tarp on the outside of that. Then I filled in the space between the pond tarp and the dirt wall with more dirt. Then we put the trampoline in and I leveled off the ground on all sides of it.

Here are a few pictures of the work: