Adventure Tower

Welcome Makers!

Welcome Make Magazine readers!

I wrote an article about the Adventure Tower which appears on page 176 in the "Homebrew" section of Make Magazine # 20.  Now my 10 yr old son thinks I'm a genius.  :-)

CLICK HERE to read the article.

Introducing the Adventure Tower

The Adventure Tower is  the coolest build-it-yourself backyard play structure ever.

I designed the Adventure Tower for my two children who love to climb, swing, slide, and use their imagination and the Adventure Tower allows them to do all of this in our small backyard. 

As my children have grown, so has the Adventure Tower with new and exciting challenges and features.

The Adventure Tower is impressive at 16 feet tall and looks like no other backyard play structure. 

You can build this in a weekend and you (and your kids) can continue to add to it for years to come.  As your child's interests grow and change the Adventure Tower is ready to grow and change with you.

Video of the Adventure Tower

Features & Benefits of the Adventure Tower

Feature: Unique – it doesn’t look like any other backyard play structure

Benefit:  Different is good.  Different engages kids and adults.  Different gets the creative juices flowing.  Different sets you apart from the masses.

Feature:  Uses standard lumber found at Home Depot (no special order). The large beams are 4x6 of three lengths (16 ft, 12 ft, 8ft).  The deck boards are 2x6.  The climbing wall is made with standard decking boards.

Benefit: You can purchase the materials for the Adventure Tower easily and quickly.

Feature:  The unique metal brackets are easy for virtually any metal working shop to fabricate. There are only three types of brackets - - the “peak” bracket (one needed), the horizontal beam brackets (six needed), and the "Pin Wheel" bracket (three needed). 

Benefit:  The unique metal brackets can be easily made by virtually any shop. 

Feature: The Adventure Tower uses existing play structure products available at Home Depot and Lowes.  These include cargo nets, slides, rock climbing hand holds, steering wheels, etc. 

Benefit: You can purchase "standard" play structure products and add them as you desire.

Feature: Add-on possibilities are endless.  These include: additional slides, canopy (to keep rain out), "club house” underneath, see-saw , zip line from tower to a nearby tree, "secret" doors, and more!

Benefit: You can build the “basic” Adventure Tower and then add on new features as you wish.  The tower is expandable as your needs expand.

Feature: The Adventure Tower is an incredibly stable structure as it is built using one of the strongest geometric shapes known to man - - triangles.

Benefit: The Adventure Tower will be strong and stable for years to come providing years of fun play. Play structures based on squares or rectangles are much more likely to become unstable and turn into parallelograms thus decreasing play set strength and longevity .  The triangle shapes used in the Adventure Tower enable it to last for many years and remain completely stable.

Feature: The design requires very little waste of lumber.

Benefit: You save money and the environment.

Feature: Lots of activities in a small space (small footprint).

Benefit: Perfect for backyards where space is at a premium.  Lots of children can be active playing in a small space.

Major Components of the Adventure Tower

The image to the left shows the major components of the Adventure Tower.  Click on the image to enlarge.

NOTE:  This image shows the Adventure Tower with the awning removed to show details.

View Photo Album of the Adventure Tower

CLICK HERE to view the Adventure Tower Photo Album.

Plans for the Adventure Tower

I created the Adventure Tower for the fun of it.  When other parents saw it they wanted to know how to build one themselves so I bought this domain name (AdventureTower.com) thinking I'd sell the plans through the site.  Then I spoke with an attorney who strongly urged me not to sell the plans due to liability issues.  Turns out there are all kinds of safety regulations for backyard play structures.  And the Adventure Tower is definitely NOT safe.  There are so many ways for kids to get hurt on this thing.  Paying for liability insurance is definitely not the answer (it's WAY expensive).  If you know of a way around the liability issue please contact me. I'd like to see more people building Adventure Towers in their backyard.

Contact Tom

Contact the inventor of the Adventure Tower:

Tom Heck
Email:  [email protected]

When I'm not building stuff like this I'm teaching teambuilding HERE.