Treeless Setup

[robv60]

So, I've been toying with this the last couple of days. It works well and was cheap to make. Having no trees in my backyard necessitated some sort of stand and after looking at Alamosa's portable stand thread (thanks man, great idea BTW) I made a setup with one pole so I could utilize one of the fence posts seen in the pics below as the other half. It worked well enough but proved cumbersome for me to stake out the pole and it sequestered me to one spot in the yard. I wanted to be able to move my setup around so I had pretty much resigned to building one of the Turtle Stands. However, I'm not crazy about the idea of having the pole over me, its more bulky and I haven't wanted to spend the money on the pole because, lets face it, I'm cheap. So I have eventually come into this setup. Its pretty easy to set up in that I can stake down one side and then essentially "accordion" the rest up with little effort. It takes very little time to set up after its initially built. My backyard is hard GA clay and is like concrete right now so I'm not currently using boom stakes and it seems ok. As long as the ground is dry like is was a couple of hours ago I think they'd hold. That being said, its raining like crazy right now so If I were caught in this rain and the ground got soggy I may end up on the ground or with a long nail slung through my skull. That thought makes me a bit nervous for some reason so I may upgrade to something better than the long nails I'm using now. The only real issue I have with this setup is that the top line goes slack when the hammock is loaded which will cause my tarp to go somewhat droopy. I had this same issue using the single pole Alamosa-ish setup so I was kind of expecting it. Not sure if its a deal breaker but I'm sure I will eventually build a turtleXstand to avoid this. Anyway, there's nothing really groundbreaking about it as we've all seen the bipod setup before in various iterations but I was bored and thought Id share .

Specs:

Poles are 2x2" (actually 1 3/8 x 1 3/8) cut 84" long.
When the feet are spread, the eye bolt attachment points sit roughly 5'9" high.
Attachment points are 13' apart set by the length of rope between them.
Stake ropes are 16' long and I'm using truckers hitches to tension the system up.
Eye bolts were 3/8" x 6" long placed 4 " from the ends of the 2x2's.
Rope is a diamond braided, polyester rope I had lying around. I think It came from China Fre...I mean Harbor Freight.
Tarp will be secured to the ridge line with prussiks.
Truck is a Tacoma.
I'm a Sagittarius.
Wrestling is fixed.

Link to Pics:

http://s105.photobucket.com/user/rob...deshow/hammock

[e_2]

if it works, it works. Have you thought about adding ropes from one of the feet at the head end to the foot end? Just to ensure a consistant setup each time.
Also, if you are going to have it out in the elements often, consider treated/teak/redwood... something meant to be outside.

[Meckie]

Have you thought about taking shock cord to make "shock absorber" like some people (me being one of them) put on their tie outs for their tarps. This should keep the slack out of the line when you get in it. I will take a pic of my tie outs when I get home from work in the morning.

[Meckie]

With the ridge line for your stand being heavier you could probably get away with using to old Bungy cords just make sure they're pulled out to about 80% of their taunt length to see where to tie them into the ridge line. uploadfromtaptalk1400154256662.jpguploadfromtaptalk1400154286293.jpg

[AaronMB]

Right on.
This setup is not uncommon and they seem to work - popular for traveling and camping. The others I've seen often guy out the bottom of the legs on each side, too, to prevent any accidental in-ward slipping of the feet.

[robv60]

Have you thought about taking shock cord to make "shock absorber" like some people (me being one of them) put on their tie outs for their tarps. This should keep the slack out of the line when you get in it. I will take a pic of my tie outs when I get home from work in the morning.

Funny you mention this as the same thought occurred to me earlier today. I just got on here to search out the idea when I saw your reply. I may need some heavier shock cord than I jave now but im eager to try it. Thanks for the suggestion! Great suggestions all around, actually. I have been considering putting some spikes on the feet to negate them moving around although a bit of rope would be a simpler solution so I may try that as well. I had bought some ridiculous stakes from Academy yesterday ( these : http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/grip...=stake&Ntk=All )but my ground was so hard I could only drive them in halfway. I ended up taking them back a purchased some long spikes ( These : http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/timb...=stake&Ntk=All ) that may work well. I figure they'll be better then the nails I'm using now even though they're holding quite well. Am anxious to see how they do after the big rain last night though.

****EDIT**** wow what a difference an all night rain makes. I went outside to mes with the setup and merely pulling down on the center of the ridgeline, not getting in the hammock, just pulling down hard caused one of the nails to pull out and the whole structure collapsed. Ground is REALLY wet right now. Yesterday I had to hammer the stakes in with some effort. Today I could push the 18" stakes all the way in by hand. May have to move to a multi stake setup, booms or something else. All is not lost as I have other options using one of the bipods and an anchor point on the corner of my house or fence. Not as mobile but will work. Anyway......

@e_2, Ill definitely move to something more element friendly after Im confident this'll work for me. Thank you for the suggestion. I had thought about just painting them with some outdoor paint but Im not too keen on the strength of the pine so I may move to something harder for that reason alone. I may even make it our of chain link fence posts or something I can break down.

[robv60]

where to tie them into the ridge line. uploadfromtaptalk1400154256662.jpguploadfromtaptalk1400154286293.jpg

So, quick question for you. I had planned on attaching my tarp via prussiks to the line running between the stands so I could adjust and tighten the tarp. Of course, the main line going slack would cause the tarp to go slack as well. My thought was to make the prussiks out of shock cord to help keep the tarp taut when this occurs. But Im thinking I may be on the wrong track..... Should I just make some bungee tie outs for my tarp ends and attach them to the eye bolts instead? Take the ridgeline out of the loop all together?

[Timberrr]

Wait... wrestling's fixed????

[robv60]

Yeaaaah, sorry about the wrestling spoiler. Anyhoo, an update.....with pictures!!!!

So as mentioned above we got a doozy of a shower the other day which turned my once concrete hard ground into soft wet clay. My nails and even the longer 18" spikes wouldn't hold. I will need to find a better anchoring method if I want to be able to move the setup around. I'm still thinking a turtledog stand may be my only option otherwise. Anyway, I had someone on another post ask for more details about how I have everything set up so I thought I would add the info here rather than splitting it up into another post. I am still able to utilize one of my bi-pods as a second anchor point by tying it off to one of the posts that support my shed. My shed is a good 30 ft away from the corner of my house where I have an eye lag screw. Using the bi-pod enables me to pitch off the corner of my house and hook to the bi-pod which is in turn tied off to the shed. It works quite well but obviously isn't as mobile. Well, a post without pictures is merely, well....a post without pictures so here's a couple shots....

Overall setup: Eye lag screw is in the corner of my house. Line from there to bipod. Seperate line loops over the top of the bipod and ties to foot at shed.



Truckers hitch at shed for tensioning the system. REALLY gets it tight.



Connection to bipod, everything to the one eye bolt.



Same at the house corner. Got to patch that hole where I used the wrong sized bit like an idiot.



Another shot. Also shows the "doors" on my Chinook tarp closed. A side note about this; This is the first time I tried closing them off and it works much batter than I thought it would with the oddly spaced tieout points on this tarp. It works but one end of the tarp provides for more room inside because the tieouts are closer to the end of the tarp. You can kind of see this in the first pic above. I will be adding some more tieouts to make it more uniform and could really use some side panel pulls to open things up a bit. Otherwise this tarp is quite nice for the price.

[cm2111]

Nice! Thanks for the details! Gives me some ideas.