• How to Build a Backyard Basketball Court Choose Your Base

How to Build a Backyard Basketball Court: Choose Your Base

Many of us grew up shooting hoops in the driveway, chasing the basketball as it bounced into the street, or inevitably cowering when the ball bounced off the hood of our mom’s new car. Nowadays, families have a better choice for improving their skills on the court: building their own backyard basketball court. Where to begin? How to build a backyard basketball court? As with many things in life, the foundation is key to your basketball court’s triumph. i

What kind of base materials are best to build a basketball court?

Concrete is the first and best choice for a home basketball court. While often the most costly base option, concrete is going to give you the best performance and long-term results. A typical concrete pad for a backyard basketball court will consist of a 4″ pad with steel reinforced rebar and saw cut expansion joints. The key point is to ensure that your concrete is level and has minimal slope.

A common alternative to concrete is an asphalt pad. This is a popular selection since materials and installation are typically less expensive than concrete. As with concrete, ensure the asphalt is level and has minimal slope. The finish should be relatively smooth and not have any large aggregate. This will work well as long as you don’t  have any large tree roots that could grow under the court.

When building a half-court or little basketball court, you have a third option for a base: Compacted Stone. A Compacted Stone base will be the least expensive option. It might require some periodic maintenance, such as backfilling and re-compacting over the years. This is a great alternative when your backyard has limited access, impervious cover restrictions, or when you want to be able to remove the court later. You’ll want to be sure to use timbers or forms to contain the court to prevent erosion and place a layer of geotextile or high quality landscape fabric over the finished base to prevent weeds from growing and dust from coming up through the SnapSports surfacing.

Will stamped concrete, patio pavers or a wood patio
work for a basketball court?

In most cases, stamped concrete or patio pavers aren’t good solutions for a base for SnapSports surfacing. Pavers have a tendency to be uneven or have gaps between the pavers. This can result in poor performance of surfacing by creating dead-spots or an erratic ball bounce. Wooden decks can have the same effect due to warping of the wood and gaps between planks.

If you have an existing patio and want to use it as a base for SnapSports surfacing, you’ll want to test the ball response before investing in surfacing. Take a basketball out to the patio and bounce the ball around for a while; how it responds without a surface is similar to the end result if covering it with SnapSports surfacing.

By |November 27th, 2015|Basketball, Residential|