Make-It Monday: Make Your Own Tent Weights

When you do craft shows a lot, you experience shows in all sorts of weather.  Everyone thinks about having a good tent to keep you (and your art!) shaded in the sun and dry in the rain...but we can easily forget about wind!  And high winds can easily turn your tent into a giant kite if you don't have it properly weighed down!
So this week's Make-It Monday project  will be teaching you how to make your own tent weights... courtesy of Francesca DeCaire Glass Artist!  

"Last year, Jason and I made some weights for my EZ-UP tent. I’m not sure this is the way I would go about it today, but it works out alright and they are certainly heavy enough. We used a tutorial that I found as a guide. My weights are slightly different and a few pounds heavier, approximately 40 pounds each. Materials totaled much higher than anticipated, roughly $140.

With these weights my tent has been through gusts of wind up to 40 mph without taking flight. I have seen other tents go down that were not secured with enough weight, including one that destroyed my own tent.

Here is an example of really bad weights from a show I just did this week! Boy was I glad that wind didn’t come with the rain storm we had.

Weights or wind chimes? These would knock me straight in the head in high winds.

Here is how we made my weights.

Materials:

• One 10′ 4″ diameter PVC pipe, cut into four 2 1/2′ sections
• Eight 4″ diameter PVC end caps
• Four 12″ x 1/2″ eye bolts
• Sixteen 1/2″ hex nuts
• Eight 5/8″ washers
• PVC primer and glue
• 2 bags of 80lb Quickrete mix
• Water
• Wheelbarrow or tray for mixing cement
• Shovel and scoop for mixing and pouring cement

Make sure that the ends of the PVC pipe are clean. You can remove burs with sandpaper.

Prime the insides of 4 caps and the outside of one end of each pipe.

After the primer sets apply the glue.

Firmly attach the cap and pipe.

With the remaining 4 caps drill holes for the eye hooks.

Prime the drilled caps. Insert eye hook bolts. Thread on nuts and washers.

Prepare your cement mix. Follow the manufacturer’s directions.

Fill the pipes with concrete, we used a plastic cup. Bounce pipes many times to remove air pockets. Prime and glue top of pipes and inside of drilled caps. Attache when ready. Bounce again to remove air pockets around eye hooks.

Allow the weights to cure standing vertical.