Perfect Pond Rope Swing

Its like 87 degrees outside and we are all commenting how nice it feels compared to the latest heatwave! Anyhow, today was beautiful and we installed a rope swing.

Let me just say that installing a rope swing isnt just a simple task like installing a dock. It is however very fun to figure out, and I am always up for a new challenge. After installing a handful of pretty good rope swings, I believe we have finally got er down to a science and have now perfected the art of putting in the perfect pond rope swing. (Yes Jeff, self proclaimed rope swing installer experts!)

Here are a handful of pics from today. Last week we set the steel beams into the big concrete footings. Lots of steel underground in the concrete. Now the concrete is hard enough to set the rest of the swing in place.


We stood the center pole up with some do it yourself engineering and our Kubota mini-excavator. The hill is too steep and the asphalt road leading back to the property is too fragile for a big crane. We used our electrofishing boat as a platform to hold the ends of the poles out in the water and the mini excavator to set the poles on the shore end. Then we winched the poles up in place.


We poured a big footing up at the top of the hill and attached the wire with a turnbuckle to keep the poles supported at the perfect rope swinging angle. Took till lunch time to get all the poles set, than after lunch we built a jump platform 13 feet off the water and put a set of ladder stairs leading up to the platform.


The boys got home from work and were able to cool off by testing out their new rope swing right in their front yard!



I was just using my camera phone, so pics arent great and timing isnt easy with the delay after pushing the take a picture button, but you can see this rope swing really gets them boys out and up!


Let me just say that this property sitting on top of a hill with a house and a 2 acre pond surrounded by bunches of magnificent big trees is about as cool as they come. (thats before the new dock and rope swing) Thomas Kinkade could paint a dozen different nature scenes from this property, its just awesome. I am used to reclaimed strip mine scrub ground, but this timber over in Woodford County is unspoiled and just awesome.