Home owner Zipline

drkelly

drkelly

Dipstick who put two vehicles on jack stands
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Oak Ridge/Stokesdale, NC
I'm thinking about building a zipline for my boy and his cousin who is over regularly. My boy is only 3.5 yrs old, and his cousin is 5.5 yrs old, so it won't be too big for now until they get older. Anyone built one and have any advice?

Thanks,
Danny
 
A buddy of mine takes his winch and strings it up to a tree for his kids now and then. He just bought/built the zipper part. When done, he just retracts parks his Jeep.
 
post the info you find

I am starting to design a tree house for my kids in back yard about 15' up and would be awesome to add a zipline as a way to get down
 
Dad built us one as a kid, biggest issue was stopping after a 100 foot zipline and we usually rolled down into a gully. Didn't hurt but it wasn't a fun landing either. A friend broke his arm on the fall once and his parents sue'd mine... so be careful about that.
 
XJfreakHO said:
Dad built us one as a kid, biggest issue was stopping after a 100 foot zipline and we usually rolled down into a gully. Didn't hurt but it wasn't a fun landing either. A friend broke his arm on the fall once and his parents sue'd mine... so be careful about that.
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We have some friends that built one. Strangely, he is a pastor and he built it in the backyard of the parsonage, lol. The congregation was not exactly thrilled... but the kids love it.
Biggest challenge indeed seems to be guaranteeing a nice landing.
They do seem to be a lawsuit liability - I view them like trampolines or pools - I'd rather have a friend that has one than have it in my yard :D
 
I've been looking at kits. Most of them seem to state for ages 8 and up. I might be jumping the gun on this since my boy won't be 4 until mid-Nov. I've got a good spot on the front of my lot that appears to have a good shallow slope so they will never be very high off the ground and shouldn't pick up too much speed. I'm definitely going to buy one of the kits with a seat. The starting and ending height of the cable along with the proper sag is what I am I most interested in. I found this picture on the internet:

zip-line-length-plan.jpg
 
drkelly said:
... I've got a good spot on the front of my lot that appears to have a good shallow slope so they will never be very high off the ground and shouldn't pick up too much speed.
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yep, make sure it has a good "jump off" height. being 4y/o they don't weight that much and it may not carry them to the landing point. I remember the Zip line places I've been to, you had to be at least a certain weight just to have the momentum to carry you across.
 
My dad made us a few back in the day. Biggest advice is to keep the line high enough so you can add 3-4' from the pulley down to the harness or whatever riding device. Once anybody with long hair gets caught in the pulley, the only way to get the person out is to cut hair at the scalp with a razor. We were warned over and over so it never happened to us but I imagine not a pretty sight if it ever did happen. I have nothing to worry about that situation today. :) Wild chest or ear hair maybe. LOL
Also, something wide and flat to ride on (triangle attached) or something would be more comfortable and easier to jump in and go than a harness. Something creative with handles maybe? We always strapped into a harness and attached with a carabinder. But I just searched and see harnesses look tremendously more comfortable than they did 30 years ago... Back then your leg blood circulation was a factor considering distance travelled. LOL
 
Vanilla Ice built one on his show, The Vanilla Ice Project or something like that.

His idea was kind of terrible as it required the person using it to climb up over a railing and try and avoid a tiki cabana or something. Looked like fun, for a while.

I'd prefer one more like the one in Home Alone. Would be cool to zip line over to your tree house.
 
When I was a kid dad built a deck/tree house about 14' off the ground w round railings made from 4-6" hickory logs. He and my uncle hung a cable and log about 50' high between 2 large trees and hung a fat hemp rope from it to make a swing. A big knot near the end of the rope was a seat and we would sling the rope up to the tree house and swing off it and across the creek. The deck of the treehouse stuck out 3 or 4' past the railings and It was a blast as you could swing across the creek Tarzan style, kick off a big pine at the end of the arc and swing back up to the tree house.
 
Seems to me the REAL key is a slick way to get the seat/harness back quickly w/o having to walk it back
 
RatLabGuy said:
Seems to me the REAL key is a slick way to get the seat/harness back quickly w/o having to walk it back
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That's actually easy in theory, but a lot of work. You can make a variable pulley system of it's own that's attached via a small cable to the main pulley. Like what you'd see on a garage door with small cables wrapping around multiple pulleys. You can use all garage door hardware. The more pulleys with their own springs, the longer you could set them up for a return. That would probably be a lot of trial and error but very cool. I know you can get garage door springs in many rated tensions but I'd bet there is even spring companies that make millions of different rated and length of springs online to choose from?
Or save the money and just attach a long string to the pulley to drag back to the start - the ole fashioned way.
 
6BangBronk said:
Or save the money and just attach a long string to the pulley to drag back to the start - the ole fashioned way.
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Thats kinda what I was thinking - a big spool on a well-greased ball bearing w/ a crank handle, so it unwinds when they are sliding down and you can wind it back up.
Obviously just a rope that is a little longer than the max travel distance w/ the end tied off and the starting plank would work, but I'd be a little worried about it grabbing something on the way as it's going out (like when you throw an anchor overboard and the rope is wrapped around somebody's leg...)

that also gives you a way to bring 'em back up if they get stuck halfway
 
I got an ideer. It requires twice as much cable, but its probably a lot safer (maybe). It wouldn't be "cheap", but I think it could be executed at a reasonable cost. It would require a continuous loop of cable, a pulley at either end, and some type of connection between one or both pulleys and a torsion spring. The part that you hang from would be attached to the underslung cable in a fixed fashion, and the whole cable would rotate about the pulleys as you went down, thereby winding the torsion springs at the pulley(s). There would be nothing to get hair or hands caught in, and you could use large pulleys with good bearings which would probably give a smoother ride. The only thing you'd have to contend with is the friction of the cable bending around the pulleys. I'd draw a picture but I'm too lazy.
 
I've done some ziplining myself before. Some of it was WAY up in the trees with some pretty fast speeds. This first one will be very low and not too fast since it is for little kids. I definitely want to have the handle and seat far enough below the cable so they can't touch the cable with their hands. I hadn't thought about hair getting tangled.
 
My advice is to get used to blood, bruises and crying, thats part kids growing up, but the zipline helps 'em grow up faster. 2 of my neighbors have ziplines, one is the kit, one is homebuilt. The homebuilt one is a little sketchy, mostly because single-mom's boyfriend welded a ~50lb steel psuedo-cockpit contraption that hangs from the cable. The starting platform is about 15ft high. Sounds fun, but we are considering banning or requiring our kids to wear their bike helmets on this one. Our 9yr old got nailed by the seat-a-majig as he jumped off at the end, surprised his skull didnt crack. He was bawling like it really hurt, not the skinned knee types of cries, and ended up with a huge bump on his head.
With the kit version at the other neighbors house, they start off from the picnic table. The plastic disc/seat is a lot safer, but someone inevitably tries to return it by slinging it back to the starting point, and this has resulted in a few bloody lips.
 
My brother & I always wanted to build one of these, but there wasn't anywhere good to build it at my folks place.

Another return idea that would require twice as much cable. Build two ziplines (same lengths, different directions) and connect the seats with a rope that goes around a pulley so when you zip down line1, seat2 returns on its own & vice versa. Not the greatest idea but if you're going to have the coolest playground around, might as well so big.

Found a quick video on a bungee brake system...
 
Lurch830 said:
Another return idea that would require twice as much cable. Build two ziplines (same lengths, different directions) and connect the seats with a rope that goes around a pulley so when you zip down line1, seat2 returns on its own & vice versa. Not the greatest idea but if you're going to have the coolest playground around, might as well so big.
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I like this idea even better than mine. Simple, no waiting, no complications.
 
Me and a buddy built a few over our before we had a license days. We used a cable hooked to a tree, his dad had from some where, that was 100'ish. Then the other end we used a large comealong of some sort to pull tension. This way we could move it around and change it up. Then we'd put a short rope to bicycle handle bars on the pulley or make a sit on seat with a bucket lid or log. I've seen people drill holes in used tires and string them on the line for the brake. We just put a clamp and had a fun swing when the pulley stopped. And just had a light string hanging, to pull it back up to the next person.
 
REI has a 90ft zip line ready to go.



When I was in my first apartment we built one using a come-along to create the tension and the front fork and wheel of a bicycle as the pulley. To "land" we roped a push mower to stand on like a skateboard and skid to a sliding halt to slow down. It was not kid friendly but man was that thing fun. I wish I had our old VHS video to share.
 
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