Let's Hoop It Up

Summer is nearly here. And this year, we'll have a new reason to get out of the house. Meet the new basketball hoop.

'Twas but a sad, dismembered and baseless fellow, stuffed in the corner of a St. Joseph family's garage, when I found him on Facebook last fall for $20.

Much like this spring, last fall was cold and rainy, preventing me from putting him up myself. But last month, I pulled him out of his box and put his pieces together.

Since his last family only wanted him for his base, I had to design him a new footing. After some searching online, I found the closest post anchor I could find. But alas, even that wasn't quite big enough to fit the awkwardly sized pole. So I fashioned a sleeve that would fit into the base, over which I could slide my hoop pole. Of course, the only piece of pipe I could find to fit in the base was some kind of hardened steel that's tough on drill bits.

Next up was digging a hole and mixing cement. I went with a design that butted up against the driveway, and was just the right size for some of my brick pavers. More than 3 feet of hole, 12 feet of rebar, 4 J-bolts and 680 pounds of cement later, we had a foundation.

I decided to replace the simple pins in the base with full nuts and bolts to hold things in place a little better. And the hoop pole got a couple of bolts of its own to anchor it to its sleeve. It still sways a little bit (hey, it's a pole slide over another pole, there's a little wiggle room), but I don't think it's going anywhere. Short of welding the hoop pole to the base (I'm taking volunteers if you know how to weld), it's as sturdy as I can make a portable-turned-in-ground-hoop.

The kids (OK, one of the kids) helped me test it out tonight, and it seems to work just fine. I can't wait to start using it.