Planning Your Home Volleyball Court

Before you can start building your home volleyball court, you've got to plan it out. In fact, you should really do this before you even buy any of the supplies for your volleyball court. You really need to have a good idea of what you need and where you're going to put it before you buy.

Step one is to decide what kind of home volleyball court you want. You can create a volleyball "court" simply by marking off a rectangular area in your garden. If you do this, all you have to do is set up a net and mark off the out of bounds areas. You can do this by getting a grass chalker (one of those little push carts that they use to mark off areas on a football field) and mark out your rectangle. However, this type of home volleyball court isn't very useful since rain will wash it away.

If you want to go for something a bit more upscale, you can purchase railroad sleepers and use them to create your volleyball court. You may want to use a chalker to outline your rectangle so you have all of the measurements right. Then put down one rectangle of railroad sleepers. You'll want to put your second set of sleepers, if you're doing two layers, so that one sleeper goes across the junction of two of the first layer sleepers. This will add stability to the "court". If you want to recreate a sand volleyball court, you can then fill the area about halfway up with sand.

Of course, you can always create a cement volleyball court. This takes the most work, but it is the most durable. Of course, safety may be an issue here - you're not going to want to dive for the ball! You might also want to avoid a cement volleyball court if you have young children since they may fall and hurt themselves. For these reasons, cementing the area may not be the best idea. However, you may want to put small squares of cement around your volleyball net poles to make certain they are stable and will not be blow away by a strong wind or knocked over if someone bumps into them.

Once you've got your plan, it's time to put together a list of measurements. You need to know the exact size of your volleyball court. Is it going to be regulation size? If you have a small yard, that's probably not going to be possible. If you can make it regulation size, figure up how many railway sleepers or other markers you're going to need. You also need to decide on a net. Do you want to install a permanent volleyball net? If you do, you'll need sturdy poles and some cement. If not, you'll need to decide just how strong of a net you want. Those designed to be put up and taken down often aren't exactly sturdy or stable.