Streetminton – that overwhelming desire for badminton that demands its presence in the street for lack of a gym. Consider asking your local government first if its OK to paint the lines in the street. Click here for a pic.
How to do it: There’s two main tasks; first is how to do the net and second is how to get the lines on the street. Let’s examine how we got the lines on the street first.
OK – you’ve decided to paint the lines. Good for you!
Step one: Go to Home Depot and look for the spray paint section. Look for the spray paint that is in a can specifically designed to mark lines on the ground. It’ll take about 3 cans to mark out one regulation court. Get white or yellow. Buy at least 200’ roll of yellow string. But some landscape spikes. I’ll assume at home you have a tape measure and a hammer
Step two: Go to the web or the library and find the dimensions for a regulation badminton court. It’s easy.
Step three; Get a friend to help and measure out one 44 foot line. Pound in a stake at one corner of your court, tie the string to it. Secure the other end of the string so its nice and tight.
Tip: If you can’t pound the spike in the ground use a brick or something heavy and tie the string around that.
Step 4: Ok so now you have one long bit of string, pulled nice and tight along the pavement. So now, about a foot or so outside of that one long string secure another string and go across about 21 feet. The outside dimensions of a court are 44 feet long by 20 feet wide.
Step 5: the trick now is you want the 2 strings to be at a perfect right 90 degree angle. No sweat, it’s easy. Use the 3 4 5 rule. From the intersection of the corner measure 3 feet in one direction and mark it. Then measure 4 feet in the other direction and mark it. Now measure diagonally between the two marks, it should be exactly 5 feet. If it is, that means your square – that’s good. If its not, that means you’ve go to adjust the angles of one of the lines so that the 3 and 4 foot marks are exactly 5 feet apart.
Step 6. Ok so line out the extreme outside edge of the court on all 4 sides.When done you should have a perfect rectangle of yellow string that measures 44 feet long by 20 feet wide, measuring from the intersection of the strings at the corners.
Step 7: Get your paint can and shake it up and hold it about 6 inches above the string and start spraying paint moving along as you go and outline the entire border.
Step 8: Look at the badminton court diagram you downloaded off the web. Now move the string (both the 44 and 20 foot string) into the next positions and secure them and paint over. Remember the old carpenter adage: measure twice and cut once, only substitute cut for paint.
OK so now you have all the lines painted on the pavement. Terrific. But what about the net? Basically there’s any number of ways to pitch up the net, here’s the one I like:
Step 1: get 2 five gallon buckets, 2 boards that measure about 12” wide by 3 feet long, 6 molly bolts, a 6 foot long pvc pipe about 1” diameter and two 6’ pieces of metal electrical conduit and 2 sacks of Portland cement and some PVC cement. Probably cost about $50 bucks if you have to buy all of it.
Step 2: Using a drill, make holes in the bucket and the boards and use the molly bolts to bolt the boards to bottoms of the 5 gallon buckets. About 3 bolts per bucket ought to do it. VERY IMPORTANT: Bolt the bucket at one end of the board, so that the board sticks out like someone sticking out their tongue. The board is there to prevent the bucket from tipping over.
Step 3: Assuming you got PVC pipe that is just a bit larger than the electrical conduit, cut the PVC to the match the depth of the bucket and put it in the bucket in line with the board. Probably will help to glue it so it won’t move around. Do that to both buckets.
Step 4: By now you should have an empty bucket bolted to a board on the bottom with a piece of PVC inside the bucket glued to the side and lined up with the board. So mix up the cement and pour into the bucket.
Step 5: Let it dry. Now you have a good solid portable base for the net. Just stick in the electrical conduit into the PVC pipe and you have a pretty good net standard. You don’t need to drill holes or anything like that on the conduit. Just tie your net string to it and adjust for the right height. Badminton net should be 60” of the ground at the center and 61” at the extreme left and right edges of the court.
One thing I like about the bucket system is it breaks down fast. If a car is coming, no problem, just pull out one of the conduit pieces and move the net.
Then just stick it back in and your ready to go again. Also to move the buckets you can easily slip a handtruck under them and wheel them about.
You might be tempted to skip the step of bolting the boards to the bottom to the buckets. Don’t do it. The boards will allow you to put lots of tension on the net to get it nice and tight without the bucket tipping over – that’s crucial. You need to be able to put tension on the net, otherwide you will not be able to get the right clearances at the middle and ends.
Ok now you have an official looking badminton court with portable net standards that you can set up and take down in minutes. Does life get any better than that? I think not.
