Splash-Pod: The Personal Water Park

Step 12 Bringing it all together.

Things are about to get really tight. If you left yourself sufficient slack on the jets it won't be as bad for you as it was for me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The very first thing that you need to do before completing the tub is to finish the four sides. Since the top panel rests above all four sides and the top horizontal rails, all sides must be complete before we can continue. Up until now we had all sorts of freedom to work on the plumbing and tubes because the sides weren't in the way. With the sides assembled, our room to move is very effectively diminished. It gets much worse with the top on.

The top sides use gusset joints for additional support. These are best assembled all at once so that you can move around the sides and install the top rails with the joints ready to go. Each joint consists of five parts: two bolts, two t-slot nuts and one gusset. Assemble these by placing one bolt through the gusset hole. Loosely attach one of the nuts to the bolt, leaving plenty of room for movement. Repeat the process with the next hole. These nuts will slide into the top rails as well as the vertical legs. Slide a gusset joint onto the rails, one on each end. After all four rails are completed, we're ready to install the wood.

Insert a wood panel into a t-slot channel on both sides and press it down until it hits the bottom. The wood might have warped a little bit from the paint so you may need to press it in or out to make it line up with the bottom slot. Press it down until the wood is properly seated into three channels. Now we can install the top rail. On one side, slide the gusset joint all the way over until it is at the end of the rail with the vertical nut facing down. Press the nut into the vertical channel but don't drop it in all the way yet. Continue on the other side so that both joints are properly sitting inside the channels. Now, press down on the rail and fit its channel over the top of the wood panel. Ensure that it is flush with the two vertical legs before tightening all of the bolts. There isn't much room here so tightening the bolts will be time consuming without a ratcheting hex wrench. After all four bolts are tight and the rails are flush with the legs, this side is complete. Rotate around to the next side and repeat the process.

Now we have finally completed the chassis! Strong and sturdy - just what we need. Take a step back and admire the work but don't waste too much time because there's a lot of annoying work left.

With the plumbing all assembled and secure in the frame below, we move on to the tub connections. The problem is, we have no more room to work. The tub sits inside the top panel and the panel on top of the now enclosed box. This makes it very difficult to reach underneath and make all of the tubing connections. I found that almost all of my connections could be made by rotating the top 45 degrees so that 4 corners are opened up. You can also raise the top panel slightly to give a little extra room. All of this depends on how much slack you left yourself on the tubing. I had a good amount on 14 of my 16 tubes so I saved those last short connections to the very end. Carefully reach into the exposed openings and connect the ends of the jet tubes to the proper barbed fittings which are on the end of the manifolds. I found that the 1/8" barbs properly held the tubing without any difficulty. The 1/4" barbs occasionally blew the tubing off, so I made sure to clamp the tubes with a worm-drive clamp. The 1/2" accessory joints DEFINITELY need a clamp as these blow off with even a single jet. We don't want there to be much water spray underneath the tub.

Work your way around and connect all of the tubes. Finish the connections by hooking up the buttons to their respective valves. One positive goes to the valve and the negative goes to the negative line. These should be waiting for you, as described at the end of step 9. When everything is complete, rotate the top back into place. We are now ready for the last round of leak testing. First, press each button and listen for a faint click coming from the solenoid valves. Go ahead and hook up your garden hose to the fitting underneath the chassis.

Lift the top of one side so that you can take a peak inside. Turn on the hose and look for any new leaks from the main plumbing assembly. Check to see that the solenoids hold properly without any leaks. Passing those full-pressure tests, move on to the button tests. Press one button and ensure that all the proper jets fire. Check below to see if any tubes are loosened off their barbs or need to be reset. If you clamped the 1/4" and 1/2" barbs there shouldn't be any tubes that fly off. Proceed with the rest of the buttons and follow the above tests. Past this, we're pretty home free.

Now onto the modular toys.