Batting Cage is Up!

For years I've wanted to create a place for all three of my kiddos to practice hitting.  I built a place in the basement for them to swing but it wasn't the best set up.  A batting cage would be ideal.  I looked on line for a batting cage and discovered if I wanted to spend a thousand dollars, I could get a really nice one.  At the end of this summer I came across a website, www.ondecksports.com that advertised a custom batting cage.  I entered the dimensions of the new place I wanted to set the kids up in, our garage, and the website spit out the cost.  I wanted this batting cage to be eight feet high, ten feet wide and fifteen feet long.  I wanted to strength of the twine to be the toughest I could afford.  The site spit out the price of two hundred and thirty dollars!  I couldn't believe it.  All the other sites, for the same dimensions, would have been hundreds more.  So I called the company to confirm the price and the quality.  Turns out, the site was correct. In fact for five dollars more, the salesman told me, I could up grade to the quality purchased by real batting cage places (#36).  

To use the batting cage the kids have to get in the garage and close the door.  No problem as they will be using this during the winter and will want the door to close anyway.  The way I designed it was the entire cage is held up by D-clips (spring loaded ones).  The clips are attached to a wire that the kids and I put up this morning in about an hour. Here's how we did it.

I purchased three twenty foot lengths of 1/4 plastic encased wire for $.59 per foot.  I also got wire six wire clamps, six lag eye bolts and three adjustable wire (I don't know what they are called but they allowed us to pull the wire tighter once it was up).

First we drilled the holes for the lag screws eye bolts at the height we needed.  Then we took a laser level and shot that across the garage to the other side.  We tried to measure but the garage wasn't square enough to get it accurate.  We then attached the wire to both side and clamp the wire through each eye hook.  We then used the adjustable part to tighten up the wire even more.  We did that on each side of the batting cage as well as on wire down the middle.  

Hanging the cage was easy.  We attached four large d-clips to the corners and then hooked them on the wire.  We then took several other d-clips and attached them along each side and down the middle to the wire to tighten up the cage.  Done! 

When the kids are using it they can pull it out, once the door is closed.  They have to push it along the cables to put it away so they can exit the garage.  The whole thing can be pushed against the far way out of the way when the are done.