PVC Pipe goal posts

The girls have been going to summer "soccer" practice over at a local gymnasium  They've really been enjoying it and I thought it be fun to set up a goal at home for them to have a play with.  I noticed that the goal posts at the gym are made out of one of my favourite materials: PVC pipe (see here, here and here for more evidence on my apparent obsession).  So, I had a look online to get some inspiration by seeing what designs other people have come up with.  If you perform an image search for "pvc soccer goal" you should get a pretty good overview of the basic designs.

Afer sketching something on our blackboard and making sure the girls were excited by the idea we headed out to OSH to pick up the bits.  We decided on a goal which measured 4' wide, 3' tall and 2' deep and came home with 4 x 8' lengths of 1" pipe, 6 x 90 degree elbows and 4 x Tees.

Here it all is, cut to length all ready to be put together (this took less than 10 mins):

The lengths are: 2x 3'7"; 2 x 3'; 2 x 2'; 4 x 1'6"; and 2 x 1'.  Working out the lengths of the diagonal braces was the first time I've used Pythagoras' theorem in ages.

Here you can see my little helper, 'helping out' midway through the build (she was keen to get playing, bless her):

And here's the final product being put to good use:

I was hoping to find some netting at the same time as the pipes, but we had no joy.  It seems to work well enough without the net for now though (the kids have been enjoying it anyway).

I know things have been a little quiet around here recently.  It's mainly because we've just had a 50% increase in the number of girls in the house (sorry Lin, I'm not counting you).  If you're interested in meeting the latest addition, take a look at Lin's post - here.  Yes, this was from a month ago... as you can tell, Lin is much more on the ball than I am :)