House Projects

Making a Pool Cart

Introduction

One of the disadvantages of having a pool in Indiana is the amount of moving the pool cover and garden furniture in and out of a storage garage every spring and fall that has to be done. The pool umbrellas are awkward to carry and the pool cover is both awkward and very heavy.

Despite not being any sort of carpenter, in October 2017, I decided to make life a little easier for myself and make a cart to move the pool stuff around.

Planning

Materials

I rarely throw away any wood and lumber, instead I keep the various offfcuts and other bits of peices in the garage, so I knew I had plenty of wood. I also keep quite a collection of scews and other fasteners around. The only thing I really needed was a set of wheels or casters. Luckily we have a Rural King, a farm and home supply retailer, just down the road and I knew they had quite a selection.

Measurements

Measurements are important! The path between the shed and pool is a little narrow. The part that runs between the house and pool fence is 45" wide. The path inside the pool fence is 50" wide. The problem is that the pool fence gate is 40" wide.

Measuring the folded up pool cover, which was folded no differently than how I have done it in previous years, I found I could fit it on a base of 38" x 56".

To be ale to get through the fence gate and turn the cart onto a 50" wide path, meant that I could not put the casters on the corners of the cart. At least one of them would overhang the pool during the turn and I didn't want to risk the contraption toppling into the pool. This meant the casters had to be placed away from the ends of the cart. To make doubly sure, I decided to use six casters instead of four to both spread the weight and to keep it stable.

My collection of offcuts and other spare bits of wood The folded pool cover

Construction

I decided to do a simple construction of the cart usng 4" x 2"'s for the frame with lap joints to hold the pieces together.

The timber I decided to use for the pool cart Measuring and cutting the wood to length The laps marked out ready for cutting Cutting a cross lap Cutting out a cross lap Cutting out a cross lap A smoothed half lap A finished half lap joint The finished frame Screwing on the cart deck Adding the casters Adding the casters All the casters done Abbie, the quality control cat, has to have a look The almost finished pool cart The almost finished pool cart

What happens is that once the cover is off the pool and it is opened in the spring, the cover spends the summer in the garage. In the fall, the cart is used to store the pool umbrellas and benches.