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I figured we can never have enough ideas for folding simulators since everyone wants more space while still maximizing the golf fun.
A little background:
I looked for months at ideas but ultimately all of the ceilings in my house are 8ft and I wasn't going to cut into my ceilings just to play some golf indoors. I've been playing outdoors with a Spornia net but it wasn't flat and with it being hot in GA, I haven't used it in months. With that in mind, I've wanted a big shop to work on cars for a decade and felt like I've got enough saved up to make that happen. I had planned to make the shop 24x35 with 10 ft ceilings. While getting the concrete pad and retaining walls, a friend offered me a 12 ft tall car lift so the shop plans changed to 12 ft walls.
The build:
I feel like I've only seen a dozen folding setups and maybe only a few that I actually liked but ultimately none that I felt I could really pull off with my shop and the tools at my disposal or the cost of what was built was so expensive that it just seemed cost prohibitive. Most builds these days use 1" EMT which really strikes me as a bit cheesy and cheap except it's not cheap as EMT has gotten quite expensive these days. 12 pieces of 1" EMT these days is probably $250 and if you don't want to weld it together, the kit to connect them is another $130 or so. So I went the wood route. I'm still working on it but this is what I've accomplished this weekend so far.
The main frame for the screen is 12ft wide and 10ft tall. The screen frame is made with 2x10's because I wanted to eventually fold up some side nets inside. The floor is 12ft wide and 11ft deep made with 2x4's and 7/16" OSB. The floor is hinged and the electric winch to hoist is up is a fairly cheap 220/440lb winch mounted to the wall. I got a full roll of carpet padding for cheap so I decided to run two layers of it to be softer and maybe get it closer to the height of my hitting mat. I had planned on buying the cheapo turf from Lowes but the guy who sold me the carpet pad had a lot of carpet remnants and made me a deal on a piece big enough to do what I needed. Rather than using expensive eye bolts, I bought a pack of fence staples for like $6 and that is holding my screen. Although I ran out of bungees and need to buy/borrow a carpet knee kicker to stretch out the carpet.
Costs so far:
$200 - All of the wood purchased so far including some side curtains which I haven't built
$60 - Screws, staples, hinges, misc hardware, and bungees
$85 - Winch
$100 - Aikeec impact screen 10ft x 10ft (Prime day deal)
$40 - Carpet remnants
$30 - Carpet underpad
Total so far: $515
Here is a video of the winch in action.
A little background:
I looked for months at ideas but ultimately all of the ceilings in my house are 8ft and I wasn't going to cut into my ceilings just to play some golf indoors. I've been playing outdoors with a Spornia net but it wasn't flat and with it being hot in GA, I haven't used it in months. With that in mind, I've wanted a big shop to work on cars for a decade and felt like I've got enough saved up to make that happen. I had planned to make the shop 24x35 with 10 ft ceilings. While getting the concrete pad and retaining walls, a friend offered me a 12 ft tall car lift so the shop plans changed to 12 ft walls.
The build:
I feel like I've only seen a dozen folding setups and maybe only a few that I actually liked but ultimately none that I felt I could really pull off with my shop and the tools at my disposal or the cost of what was built was so expensive that it just seemed cost prohibitive. Most builds these days use 1" EMT which really strikes me as a bit cheesy and cheap except it's not cheap as EMT has gotten quite expensive these days. 12 pieces of 1" EMT these days is probably $250 and if you don't want to weld it together, the kit to connect them is another $130 or so. So I went the wood route. I'm still working on it but this is what I've accomplished this weekend so far.
The main frame for the screen is 12ft wide and 10ft tall. The screen frame is made with 2x10's because I wanted to eventually fold up some side nets inside. The floor is 12ft wide and 11ft deep made with 2x4's and 7/16" OSB. The floor is hinged and the electric winch to hoist is up is a fairly cheap 220/440lb winch mounted to the wall. I got a full roll of carpet padding for cheap so I decided to run two layers of it to be softer and maybe get it closer to the height of my hitting mat. I had planned on buying the cheapo turf from Lowes but the guy who sold me the carpet pad had a lot of carpet remnants and made me a deal on a piece big enough to do what I needed. Rather than using expensive eye bolts, I bought a pack of fence staples for like $6 and that is holding my screen. Although I ran out of bungees and need to buy/borrow a carpet knee kicker to stretch out the carpet.
Costs so far:
$200 - All of the wood purchased so far including some side curtains which I haven't built
$60 - Screws, staples, hinges, misc hardware, and bungees
$85 - Winch
$100 - Aikeec impact screen 10ft x 10ft (Prime day deal)
$40 - Carpet remnants
$30 - Carpet underpad
Total so far: $515
Here is a video of the winch in action.
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