How To Make [Cute] Canopy Weights

Okay, I realize ‘cute’ is not a necessity but I can’t stand lugging buckets of water to tie down the frame of an EZ-UP.  You can either do it like this (for super cheap) or spend a little more and buy PVC pipe and some endcaps to fit with some eyebolts instead which you can fill with either sand or concrete.  But I decided to use spent SprintKart slicks. — OR You can skip to the end and read about buying canvas soft weights you fill with sand.  Yeah, wish I would have seen that before I decided to get all crafty…

• What You Need:
  • 4 SprintKart tires, or similar. Usually your local kart track will give them to you for free if you let them know what it’s for.
  • 4 Eyebolts (make sure they are sized to accomodate a tie-down hook)
  • 4 large washers to fit your eyebolts
  • 8 nuts to fit your eyebolts (I am missing one in the pic for the assembly because I figured out two were needed during actual insertion into the concrete)  This will help keep the eyebolts stable while the concrete is wet, and from sliding out of the concrete once it is dry)
  • 2  60 lb bags of concrete (and a concrete tub to mix, with trowel–you’ll have 1/2 a bag left. Don’t forget and leave it outside to get rained on while you’re at the track like I did.)
  • 4 styrofoam plates
  • ductape
  • scissors
  • A piece of cardboard to accomodate the four tires (to protect your driveway, gravel, grass, whatever)

 

1.  Cut out a circle of styrofoam to place inside each tire and secure with ductape.  This will keep any concrete from spilling out. The styrofoam won’t last forever, but it will keep for quite a while.

2. Place tires on one side and on top of the carboard covering your work surface, choose the nicest looking sides UP if you’re picky like I was.

3.  Assemble the eyebolts (bolt,washer, nut) a bit from the end of the bolt.  Enough to keep it secure but enough so that you will have a considerable amount of bolt body left in the concrete

4. Mix concrete per directions (although I found more water was needed)

5.   Add concree to the inside of the tires, packing it into the tire very firmly with your hands.  You can use latex gloves if you want.  Wuss.

6.  Add the eyebolt assembly to the concrete and pack down firmly.

7. Clean off excess concrete from tires

8. Let dry (I let mine cure for 2 days before I used them).  If you want, rub on some tire treatment to make them look newer, shinier, etc.

And there you have it, cheap canopy weights and they look pretty cute.  Thank you to Maia for helping me!

UPDATE: Or you could buy the canvas bags (Set of 4) that you fill with 40 lb of sand for $30-60 bucks or so, not including the sand you will need to buy.  But nooooooo, I had to get my craft ON and make my own.  I didn’t know about the canvas weights lol.  But now, you do 🙂

These are so much easier to lug around.  One of my sponsors (Ian McAdam from Prospeed) actually threw out my canopy weights.  He got tired of moving those “damn heavy things around”, hahah.