18
May 2010

A Sandbox For Our Son

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We decided recently that we wanted to put a sandbox in the backyard for our son.  Initially we thought we’d build him one from scrap lumber, but then my husband came up with the idea of an inground sandbox, with no materials necessary other than the sand.  We have finished digging (and planting!) our 27 garden beds, so I decided it was time to move on to the next digging project.  Yesterday evening I spent about two hours digging this by the back fence, in a section of the yard that is just mulch and not devoted to gardening:

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It’s about 18 inches deep, and roughly four feet square.  It will cost us about $25 to fill it with sand, which we’ll hopefully be able to do this weekend.  Nothing else needed except our son’s imagination.  Digging it was a great workout, and our son spent the whole time “helping” me by jumping in and out of the hole as I worked.  Quality time with him, good exercise, an outdoor project, and a sandbox that requires nothing other than sand.  Hard to beat!

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  • Carrie

    Really great idea! Why didn’t I think of that! We were just talking about making a small sandbox for our newly purchased, part-time free-range hens. Perhaps we could do it this way. Thanks!

  • Sarah

    are you thinking of putting in retaining walls at all? (just lumber in the side). I would think that would help keep the sand and dirt from getting mixed together. That plus some sort of cover.

    We had a sandbox like this growing up, although we did have some wood around the edges. it was in-ground though.

  • http://frugalbabe.com Frugal Babe

    Sarah,
    We thought about it, but decided to just dump sand in the hole and call it good, for a few reasons. The soil here is pretty hard packed clay (digging in it is quite a workout!), and actually makes a pretty solid wall – it’s not crumbly at all. Also, our son is almost certainly going to gather dirt/rocks/wood chips from other places in the yard and dump them in his sandbox. We know it’s won’t be clean sand for very long, so a little mixing of sand and dirt from the walls isn’t going to make much of a difference. We may or may not put a cover on it. There are no cats wandering in our backyard, so there aren’t any worries about it turning into a litter box. We like the idea of our son being able to just go play in it, without needing to remove a cover, but we’ll see how it goes.

  • Herb

    Another idea we have seen when putting the sand pit in the ground is to include 2 x 6 planks around the edge (on the dirt surface) as a seat in case the sand is wet or so adults can join in the fun.

  • FrugalBabe

    Update: we filled the sandbox with sand last night, and our son loves it. We decided to put weedblocking fabric in the hole before filling it with sand, to provide a bit of a barrier between the dirt and the sand. We have a ton of weedblocking fabric on hand (we bought a 250 foot roll at the nursery earlier this spring), and it worked great.

  • http://outofthecrayonbox.blogspot.com Jane
  • http://www.rather-be-shopping.com Kyle @ Rather-Be-Shopping

    Very Clever Idea! Glad you don’t have wandering cats around. We do and I have had to rig a cover on the kids sandbox, which works fine but is kind of cumbersome.

  • http://journey11.wordpress.com/ One Sunny Acre

    I think this would work fine, particularly with the weed fabric for a liner. Truth be told, my toddler is just as happy sitting in the middle of the garden digging as she is in her little sandbox!

  • http://debtmediators.com.au Bankruptcy Ben

    You’ll need to line it with geofabric otherwise it’ll get dirty really quickly. But otherwise great idea.

  • Jamison

    Often times I have wanted to put my toddler boy in a hole in the ground… this is the legal solution!

  • http://gervasifam.blogspot.com Charles J Gervasi

    How much did all that sand weigh? My SWAG is 100 lbs/ cu.ft. That’s 2,500 pounds in your case. How did you move all that sand? Does it really weight a ton, or is my guestimate off?

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