Our daughter grew up with a trampoline in the backyard. Her cousins had one when they were growing up and that gave us the idea. Now she and her friends, who used to spend hours discussing the world’s mysteries sitting on the trampoline after a quarter hour of bouncing, discuss their disappointment with reality on FaceBook or Text and skip the trampoline altogether. So hey, we can get rid of the tramp and get our backyard back.
The photos were taken while the trampoline was being disassembled but we believe that they can be used for assembly instructions as well. Like every other set of instructions you ever waded through, we recommend that you read them completely and identify all the parts before beginning
Basic Trampoline Parts
The trampoline is pretty easily managed if you mentally divide it into three areas: the frame, the surface and the “optional” safety net. The frame consists of the rim, the legs and the feet. The surface is a big circular piece of densely woven netting connected to the rim of the frame with lots of springs and the safety net is mostly its supports which are bolted onto the legs of the frame. Assembly is pretty much from ground up.
Speaking of ground, you – and your kids – will enjoy the finished product a great deal more if the ground is level. I had to spend a fair amount of effort digging a couple shallow trenches for two of the feet and creating some custom lifts for the other four.
Tools
You don’t need many. I used a common pair of pliers and a ratchet with… I think it was a 3/8ths socket. I recommend a tape measure. I also had a helper.
I don’t think you need a helper, but there are times when just two hands is almost not enough. If you’re the strong silent type with a “Don’t talk to me, Ima ‘Git her done!'” vibe, just know that you can do this.
The Frame
I believe this is a great design; it’s easy to figure out patterns and stick with them. Find the feet which are all taped together and labeled “Feet” (or may-be “base”). Find the legs (also labeled) and shove two legs into each foot. They can only go one way; just make sure the lock button pops through the hole made for it so the leg won’t separate from the foot by
accident. You can make an untidy stack of assembled feet with legs in the middle of the area where the trampoline will go.
The rim is made of twelve curved pieces with a short stub that fits a leg. Two pieces of rim assembled to make a bigger arc will have the two stubs at the right distance to fit one of the foot-leg assemblies. You can leave each assembly of one foot, two legs and two rims around the estimated perimeter of the Tramp. When you have six sub-assemblies, start putting them all together to make a circle. there are rivets in each rim piece to insure that when the rim fits snugly, the leg points straight down. Don’t worry about the lack of springy buttons around the rim. With all the springs holding the surface to the rim, those rim pieces will stay together. You are looking at a circle of black painted metal tubing, right? If “No.”, figure out which piece isn’t right and change it.
Trampoline surface
The best way to attach the surface to the rim is to lay the trampoline inside the circle and spread it out flat and then get the bags of springs and go around the rim hanging a spring in each hole.
Potential Brain Damage
I’m not talking about how you might get hurt, I’m just talking about assembling the thing. The easiest way to make sure that the springs line up with the rings sewn into the trampoline would be to start with one and move to the next one until you are back where you started. Unfortunately, that would force the frame into an egg shape and the uneven force on one side of the circle would make the pull to fit harder and harder. So, even though there’s more walking involved, the way to do it is to go to the opposite side after the first one and hook up the spring on the opposite side of the circle. Do that until you have a spring attached to the surface at every leg. Now would be a good time to make sure that you have the same number of unattached rings and springs between each attachment. Let me humbly tell you that there is very little joy for you and any helpers if you get to the end with an extra ring on one side and an unattached spring across the circle. Now, pick one of the holes and attach a spring in the middle of the space and then its opposite, move a quarter of the circle and do that again. Keep choosing the largest hole to divide in half until you can’t stand it any more. At two or three spaces together, you can probably fill the hole without problems, but you should still try to do the opposite side next rather than fill in with one revolution.
The Safety Net
No one that I know of in my extended family has ever been terribly injured on a Trampoline. I have been at parties where the fun stopped because someone’s precious heir bounced off the Tramp and broke their arm. I resent the additional time and effort of the “optional” safety net, but I like the hours that I didn’t worry about my own heir or false sympathy of the Emergency Room staff. So here’s how to assemble that.
Safety Net Frame
There should still be a bundle of long tubes and a bag of weird hardware.
The tubes are six tops and six bottoms of the frame for the safety net.
net support pole
They look almost the same. The difference is the spring button in the top of the bottom tubes to hold the two pieces together. When you assemble these make sure there’s one spring button in each assembled long tube and that it is in the middle. These six tubes will ultimately go on every left leg – or every right leg – of the frame.
There are six plastic finials – or tops. They are held on with hooks that screw through the top of each long tube. (Another reason not to have a spring button on the top tube.) The hook holds the top of the safety net and the plastic cap prevents water from getting into the tubes and rusting them away. It’s easier to put these caps on while the Frame tubes are lying on the Trampoline rather than when they are head high above the Trampoline surface.
Safety Frame Mounting Hardware
Each Safety Net support is held upright by two u-bolts and saddle brackets, an ingenious way to fasten two tubular pieces of metal together. Each U-bolt gets a lock nut on each end and then each end is covered by a plastic threaded cap nut. Your safety net will look more attractive if you measure the same distance from the bottom of the surface of the Trampoline and mark it so that you know where you want the bottom of your support frame to be.
Try to balance the tightening 0f the locknuts or the bolt will push the socket off the nut. While the U-bolts are very loose, you are better off resting the bottom of the tube on the ground. Then as they are almost snug enough to hold the support tube, lift the tube into place and finish tightening the U-bolts.
Hanging and Securing the Net
Although my Safety Net installation held, I was never sure I’d done it right so it’s the part I’m least comfortable telling you how to do, but here goes.
The net has a top and a bottom. The bottom has several woven tethers that are intended to weave between the rings of the trampoline and the bottom of the net to prevent people from falling though the border between the frame and the surface. That part isn’t too tough; where I got confused was where the two ends of the net come together and people are supposed to enter and exit easily, yet not fall out by accident. I settled for an overlap of two rather loose end panels.
This project might take a half day unless I wasn’t as clear to you as I was to me. You’ll have to grow your own shade. That took us years. Hopefully, the trampoline will give you years of summer fun.