If there’s one thing I love, it’s simplicity. Why reinvent the wheel? The wheel is pretty darn good as it is!
This year I decided to start an edible garden which, in my area, means I had to find a way to keep the wildlife from eating my food before I did. I came up with a simple (yay!) design for deer cages to keep my peas safe. So far, it’s worked really well!
I had 2 other areas in my yard that I was still working on. I needed something… but I couldn’t figure out what to do about them.
In our play area we have a sandbox and a pool that both needed to be covered. Last year we’d just had a tarp over it, but the tarp collected water and filth like I’ve never seen. It also flew up every time we had a storm, no matter how many different size rocks I tried to anchor it with. Not the best plan.
The same was true of the pool, except the tarp wouldn’t fit on the pool. Ugh.
So I decided to try using the PVC design on these 2 areas. For the sandbox I basically built a smaller frame. Because it was smaller I didn’t need to run PVC along the bottom, which was fine by me.
It turns out the deer mesh is just about perfect, since I don’t want to keep everything out. Just cats who’d like to use Miss O’s sandbox as a litter box. It lets the rain through and catches the big sticks and leaves. Miss O would prefer something that keeps all the bugs out, too, but I don’t think that exists.
For the pool, the frame got much bigger. I definitely had to reinforce the bottom, and really should have used PVC cement to hold it together.
Like the sandbox, the deer netting keeps the big stuff out of the pool, but lets the sunlight and rain through. Because the pool is in a fairly shady area, we absolutely need sun, and even got a floating heating ring to help it along.
I did add some rope to make it easier to lift. I made a simple Y-shaped design – I stand on the far side and pull the rope until the cover stands up straight.
