Thread: black plastic maze!

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Hey guys i want to add a simple maze to my haunt this year in my driveway under a giant tent. its going to be simple and called the darkness. Nothign will be placed inside besides some actors and arrows. i want to make it all out of black plastic, it doesnt need to be too much of a sturdy wall as its more of a guide fro people to walk im just trying to figure out the best way to build it!

i am on my 4th year of this in an open part of my yard. wind will be your enemy. use thick mil plastic gorilla tape and patience. my frame is 4x4 post 1/2" pvc tons of fittings if you wish to check out add me on face book. mpr61274 at gmail

I'm from Long Island too. Don't forget our windy Octobers here. They will ravage a large expanse of plastic! Be safe and good luck.

Dan

I remember last Halloween, holding up a tent in the wind while my husband drove to Home Depot to get more wood.
The wind broke two supports and ended up having to frame the whole thing in 2x4s and tie the posts to them to get the tent to be safe.

We lost 3 whole days to just fixing the tent...vacation days I may add.

This year we threw what was left of the tent away ( a concession to my husband ) and went in the garage.

Good Luck

The garage is the way to go. We moved everything into the garage last year and it was wonderful! No more weather/theft/vandalism worries. I love having the whole month to work in peaceful secret.

I'm going to be draping copious amounts of black plastic this year on a large front porch as a mini maze entrance to my CarnEvil theme party. Any pointers on the most cost effective place to pick the plastic up?

Hate to steal anyone's thunder but, there really isn't a cheap way to do this. Also remember that plastic is flammable. Think that tarps would work the best (come in a variety of colors) & they would be more heavy duty to reuse year after year. If they are stored with generic fabric softener sheets, the smell will hinder rodents from chewing on it.


One a personal note... I've been building haunted mazes for over 10 years, our biggest is over 3,000 square feet. Have found that wood panels work the best for mazes for sturdiness & reuse. They take a lot of abuse over the years from: patrons, weather, & general usage.

Originally Posted by ctarpey

Hey guys i want to add a simple maze to my haunt this year in my driveway under a giant tent. its going to be simple and called the darkness. Nothign will be placed inside besides some actors and arrows. i want to make it all out of black plastic, it doesnt need to be too much of a sturdy wall as its more of a guide fro people to walk im just trying to figure out the best way to build it!

My first haunt was black plastic walls and the wind killed me but...

If your weather is anything like it is in KY, the wind blows hard in the day but once nighttime get here it stops. So I had to design something that I could leave up during the day without catching the wind and easy to set up at night. I used my whole yard so this was a large area.

My final design was metal pipes drove into the ground with smaller PVC that fits inside the pipe. Next I ran heavy gauge picture hanging wire from the PVC pole (cross sections to trees and the house for tension). Now with the wires up all I had to do was figure out a way to attach the plastic to it and not catch all the wind.

I took a roll of black plastic and draped it over the wire and got out every glue gun I owned along with baggies of ice. Next I used the hot glue to make a pocket in the plastic and my wife followed behind me with the ice cooling it down. Think of a curtain on a curtain rod, how you can push it together or spread it out. That was the finished results of the black plastic with the pocket on the wire.

In the day time during 20 to 30 MPH winds I could slide it together in different sections and put a bungee cord around it. Once the wind stopped it took 30 minutes to spread the plastic along the lines and I used clothes pins to hold it together where two walls met.

I don't have any pictures of the walls with the plastic but here's a picture where you can see the wire running from PVC to PVC. I used both sides of my yard and the drive way...the next year I went with wood but the plastic did it's job for that year and actually was dark and creepy just from the way it hung. I think I used 30 rolls of the 20x50 plastic

What I have learned to do is use lots of 4x4's 8 feet apart using stud 2x4's across the top. I do this for the whole perimeter of the haunt and use pvc poles on the interior. I use a 2' peice of pipe to pound holes in the yard then set the 10 footers in. I tie all this together with pvc across the top. I avg 300 a year in plastic and gorilla tape.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing this year with the black plastic and some sort of framing/hanging contraption. So far I've come up with something very similar to Madmax's. I am going to have about a 100' trailway exiting my yard haunt (2 sides). I plan on using 3 or 4 10' 3/4" EMT Conduit as "poles" on each side. You can get them at Home Depot, Lowes. etc. They are like $4 for a 10' section of 3/4" and they aren't flexible like regular PVC. I plan on putting a "pole" about every 25ft with a 3/4" Tee (T) tent/canopy fitting on top of each of them. Instead of using the wire that madmax used, i have a 100' long rope I got at Northern Tool and Equipment for like $6. I plan on attaching the rope to one end and putting it through the T Fittings all the way until the other end just like a clothes line or telephone line. Then I am going to attach the black plastic to it. I wanted to use the 20' wide rolls like Madmax and just hang it on the rope line but they are much more expensive then the 10' wide ones so I'm going to just clip the 10' on to the rope somehow. Maybe clothespins or the big black Paper Clips at Staples. As far as anchoring the EMT Coonduit poles to the ground, I'm going to use some 3/4" base tent/canopy fittings that they slide in to and use tent stakes I already have and put those in the holes on the base plate. I'm also going to use yard stakes to stake down the black plastic on the bottom. With leaving some gaps for air/wind to go under if it gets windy. Luckily here in the south we don't really have to deal with wind this time of year. Here's a link to where I'm going to be getting the Tent/Canopy fittings. Just another idea for you to think about. I too would love to make wood walls but 100' long, x 2 for each side would get a little expensive, not to mention storage would be impossible. Good luck and let us know what u do!

http://www.ysbw.com/Canopy-Fittings-3-4-Inch-s/6.htm