Thread: Planning for next year - expanding out of the garage

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I am thinking of expanding the haunted house out the front of the garage as we had a lot of scenes that we did not get to do this year. I am thinking about using canopies to do this. I have been looking around and have found temporary garages, tents or canopies that would work. Anybody do something like this already and can recommend an approach? Also, anybody know where one can get good pricing on these items.

Thanks

I haven't done anything like this but have contemplated using our garages as well. I've seen a number of people on HF who have so am sure you'll get some good advice on this topic.

If you think you might get use out of it a lot, then maybe looking for pre-season or after summer sales might be a good way to go. There's always used items through the classifies/craigslist/etc. If you want to try it out before investing in it, if you don't have a friend or family member to borrow one from, then I'll bet there are camping equipment and such rental places for these kind of items. Think about storage if you buy one, could end up taking up more storage than you think depending on what you go with.

Sams club has a 10'x20' canopy garage for about $279. I've thought about this since that's perfect for my RV pad. Right now I have two 10x10 gazebos that I wrap some of the sides with black plastic...which makes a giant windsock. So any plans like this will requre that you figure out how to anchor down what you use.

I bought my 10x20 canapy with side walls on E-bay for $100.00. Used it for the kids portion of my 3-D maze. It was up for about 6 days....held up pretty good in the wind. I had to secure it along the side we did not use, and it also had more support from the 4x7 ft frames for the maze. Was really pleased with it. I used this tent and my garage for the mazes. I was considering extending the maze to include my drive-way. Don't really know how I want to do that yet.

A lot of artists use the pop up canopies at art fairs. there are a lot of brands and tons of accessories for almost any purpose. check yard sales, craigslist, ebay etc to see if you can find them used but in good condition. Most can be staked down but all can be weighted. they can also be secured to buildings, trees, posts, fences, other canopies. they are really pretty versatile. try to find a style with the top secured to the frame by more than just velcro. They stay together in high wind better, BUT it makes them suseptible to getting tossed around.

we scored on a 10 by 20 foot tent a few years back fro 200 bucks and not a single problem . Good quality tarped roof too perfect for blockparties and fits in the driveway nicly

I am expanding to the side yard this year and am planning on using all wood walls and a e-z up to cover as much of the space as possible then I am going to use a product called smokeout, for the rest of the roof. Smokeout wont really do anything as far as rain but if your worried about rain just throw a tarp on top of the haunt. If your not planning on using wood. I would just buy or rent a party tent.

I would love to do the same but our local October winds are insane! I have a 10x20 tent at my disposal but never can use it in fear of damaging it with these crazy wind gusts..

Ter ran--if it is a pop up style you can brace the structure. I do a couple of art fairs that always have nasty high winds and I brace my EZup with my display grids as well as weighting it down. I've seen other people brace their pop ups with electircal conduit, pvc pipe, 2x2s, and one of the pop up companies makes side bracing for their canopies, but i don't recall of the top of my head which company it was. If it's a regular camping/military style tent with ropes, you can add ropes that cross brace the canvas--that's what I do for the tent I use for historical reenactment.

If look at my haunt in my gallery, you will see we use a car canopy for the maze and the entrance to the haunt. Be warned, winds plays havoc with it. Got already a few of the peices already broken (also, many are showing metal fatigue) and we need to bring them to a weilder. It flipped a few times also in the last 2 years, on windy nights, even it was secured to ground and trees on both side. One night, I was in it when it flipped hard. I am guessing people who survives tornado have similar experience, as the entire structure made a huge horrible metal crashign sound, and everything around you got lifted up. Was pretty freaky, to be honest.

This year, we had great weather, and we secured it even more, as we learned the hard way, never have enough ropes around!