Sorry for the long delay in posting. The end of the school year has been busy. Sadly, for those of you who like software, this will be another post about me building stuff. I’ll get back to software in a bit.

Last year, I wanted to give my son a cool slide for his birthday, so I consulted him, and he wanted a slide ‘like the Paw Patrol Lookout’.

For those of you who don’t know, Paw Patrol is a children’s show about a poorly managed Canadian town most of whose problems are solved by a kid and a bunch of dogs. For some, it’s a lesson in civics gone wrong. For me (who thinks too much about this) I worry about other things. For instance, all the dogs are pure breeds, except one, Rocky, who is the recycling (trash) dog. I feel that this gives a lovely lesson in eugenics for our children. ‘Keep the gene pool nice, and Rocky will clean up after us desirable dogs, even though he will outlive us all by a decade’. I can see a warped Wrath of Khan tie-in movie, where Rocky sends the pure bred pups out on the Botany Bay…

Anyhow, the point is the Paw Patrol base is called ‘The Lookout’ and I built a jungle gym/slide for my son last year based on that ‘inspiration..

I got the slide from Amazon, though be prepared to tighten 240 bolts if you buy one. The kids love it. At the heart of my philosophy of kids play is that you need to tire them out, and you need to build ahead of their skills. The kids were terrified of the slide at first, but they grew into it. To tire them out, you need either a pool (we don’t) or you need to go vertical.

 

 

So this summer I suggested two options to expand the Lookout:

1. A bridge to a widow’s walk on the roof of the garage (terrible idea); or
2. A bridge to another tower with monkey bars beneath it and a climbing wall.

The kids enthusiastically voted for number 1. My wife voted number 2, and no surprise, number 2 won.

The Design

 

I initially started with a plan like this when I built the Lookout a year ago. I wasn’t sure how it would go beyond the initial octagon, but I liked that the octagon gave me several attachment points. So I iterated over it a bit, and came up with a second plan.

You can see the top view in the lower right corner of this design.

Step 1 – The Ditch and the base

My yard has a weird feature where there is a two-foot-wide trough that runs across the back of it, and so my first step was to use a synergy with another project to fill it in. Fortunately (I guess), on the side of my house, I needed to fix a silted in drainage swale, so I was able to carry like 20 home depot buckets of dirt from the side to the tough to level out the area where I’d build the new tower.

This is likely the least interesting picture ever, but I’ll immortalize this effort, since it was pretty lame to have to do.

Once I was done ferrying dirt around, I started the base. As you can see from the design, I had a bit of a convoluted base that I wanted to build. The reason for this was that I wanted to keep the outer layers of wood on the tower in alignment so I could fasten the cedar sides on easily. So the base needed to be vertically aligned with band of wood that made the frame of the second level, and also with the frame of the railing. That would reduce the need for spacers and other stuff when I added on the cladding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I spent a bit of time building my joints so that I’d have a nice base, where the vertical posts would be exactly 1 1/2 inches from the outside of the frame, exactly the size of dimensional lumber.

I assembled the frame with four 3 1/2 inch carriage bolts that you can’t see because they are inset into the frame, and GRK RSS Screws. This brand, in my opinion, can do no wrong. These screws replace lag bolts but drive in like screws. They also have great pulling power, so they cinch the lumber together really well. GRK screws are star drive, and while a bit more expensive, never strip and go in great. I never use anything else now for framing. The extra costs are more than made up for in reduced frustration.

Here you can see the frame going in. You can see the dirt, too, where I filled in the old trough. The main material here is pressure treated 4×4, with 10′ vertical posts. the frame rests on concrete pads. I get my lumber from TW Perry, which is a great lumber yard and will deliver next day. I’ve used them for a ton of projects, and they consistently deliver great wood.

That concludes Part 1 of this post. I’ll continue in the next.