Splash-Pod: The Personal Water Park

Step 3 Getting started with the structure

Sourcing the materials.

I mentioned in the previous section that this project is best split into 2 separate categories: structure and function. This is how I will be splitting the construction walk-through as each category require different tools and techniques. Everything comes together at the end and I mean this quite literally; the functional components tie in with the structural pieces within a very tight margin.

The first category that I will tackle is the structure. This is the foundation on which the entire toy is based. It has to have strength as well as stability. Without a strong platform, I couldn't build a water toy that can support the weight of a couple of toddlers, running water, PVC & copper plumbing, a 12v battery and all of the toys and accessories that I had in mind. The 'mobile water-park' concept also focused on mobility and transportability. This required a stable foundation that wouldn't shake loose or break down from use. It has to withstand the shaking, kicking and punching that little kids are known to dish out. It needed to be attractive, or else no kid would want anything to do with it. I know I wouldn't have crawled into a gigantic metal death-tub that sprayed jets of water at my face when I was 3 years old. But a shiny blue water-toy? Sign me up! Finally, I wanted this thing to last. The frame, the body and the paint all need to stand up to the various forms of abuse that the sun, water and children can cause.

With these requirements in mind, I knew that the T-Slot extruded aluminum beams that I found online would be a perfect solution for the chassis. The box itself would be made up of birch plywood, with 3/4" thick plywood used for the weight-baring top and 1/8" thick used for the sides and bottom. For transportability, heavy-duty casters would be threaded into the bottom of the legs.

First things first - ordering the aluminum from 80/20. My plan called for a 'box with legs' that was 36" wide and deep and 24" high. The 4 legs are ordered with a 5/16" tap on both ends. This provides a place to attach the top bolts with which the top panel will be secured. The other end is where the caster wheels will be installed. One of my favorite ideas with the extruded aluminum was the use of panels inserted into the T-channels. If you look at the 'built with 80/20 stuff' portfolio on their website, you will see a lot of examples of panels being used in areas such as office furniture, modular furniture and much more. This seemed like a great system that I could use to enclose the 'guts' of my project and protect it from the world.

So I called up 80/20 and spoke with a product design specialist. We worked through a few questions and came up with the following design: 4x 1502 for the legs, cut at 24" and tapped on both ends with a 5/16" tap. This is a square-end extrusion with two t-slots on perpendicular sides. 4x 1517, cut at 36" for the lower arms. These are round-end extrusions also with two t-slots on perpendicular sides. 4x 1534, cut at 36" for the upper arms. This is a flat extrusion with only a single t-slot. This would help bear the weight of the top panel and tub. To attach all of the arms, we added hidden slot connectors for the bottom arms and heavy duty corner gussets for the upper arms.

The people at 80/20 are incredibly helpful and I'd love to send business their way so here's one more plug: http://www.8020.net/ . And, no... just for the record, none of the companies that I'm plugging have any vested interest in me or this project. I just thought I'd say thanks for the great customer service =).

Next, I need to acquire the wood panels. For the 1/8" birch, I needed four panels that were 37" by 24" and a single panel that was 37" square. For the 3/4" birch, I needed a single 39" square panel. To purchase these, I need to purchase 3x 48" square 1/8" panels and a single 8x4' cabinet-grade 3/4" birch plywood panel. I got all of these at Home Depot and had them do the cuts. I will say right now that I spent a lot of time at Home Depot. Ah, I feel a rant coming on.

Let me repeat this. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME AT HOME DEPOT.

It might seem silly but I'm wanting to type this out a third time. I won't do that, but I will explain. My biggest regret on this whole project was the absolutely ridiculous amount of time that I spent driving to, shopping and staring at the PVC at Home Depot. If I could tally the total amount of hours that I put into this project, I would have to say that 50% of them involved Home Depot or Lowes somehow. And this should be expounded by stating that this was time wasted. This is the number one lesson that I would hope to instill on anyone attempting to follow this guide: proper planning prevents poor performance. Holy crap, this was not the case for me. It's nice that I live a few miles away from my local HD but this didn't help after my 50+ trips. The entire project was a giant experiment, right? So, I had to constantly tinker with ideas to make things work or solve a problem. As soon as I fixed one problem, I ran into another that required an additional trip to HD. I must have told my wife 10 times, "There, that's it... I'm FINALLY done. I now know for a FACT that I have every last component purchased." Thirty minutes later... grrrrr... I quickly grew to hate the place.

However, I guarantee that I would not have been able to build this thing if it wasn't for the great assistance from all of the dudes in orange aprons from my many, many visits. Several of the guys there knew all about my project and REALLY helped to solve all sorts of problems for me. From day one up until two days before I filmed the closing video, I kept going back and got excellent help from the friendly staff at Home Depot. And, local plug - 95% of this was at my local Flower Mound Home Depot, store #6572. Thanks guys!

Okay, rant mostly over. I mention all of this because:
(a) I owe a lot of thanks to Home Depot and really appreciate all of the help that they provided
(b) I really never want to go back inside a home improvement store for the rest of my life
(c) despite (a) I still have to throw them under the bus about their horribly inaccurate plywood cutting abilities
(D) all of the above

While D is the correct answer, C is getting us back on topic. My artist older brother is great with wood-working and I leaned on him for a lot of questions. When I got home with my wood panels I quickly discovered how badly 'not-squre' these panels were. I emailed my brother and he responded, "Oh poor Mikey, didn't you know that having Home Depot or Lowes cut your wood is the equivalent of having a two year old with dull, rusty scissors cut your nose hair? If the yokels at HD are within 6" of what I asked them to cut I'm impressed." Ouch. ^{lesson learned #2}

To be fair, they were only about 1/8" to 1/4" off on every single panel. Still, I needed this stuff to be pretty perfect.

Anyway, I've already spent money on these panels so I need to do my best to correct it. The shipment from 80/20 has arrived and I have my mangled wood from HD. And now we can move on.