Home Garage Hitting Bay - DIY

[Silver Fawkes]

Well I finally did it. I finished building out my impact screen. I saw so many advertisements for all-in-one impact screen outfits that were ridiculously expensive, I knew there had to be a way to do it on a much more cost effective basis. 

The frame is made from 3/4" steel electrical conduit. It's just under $10 for a 10' stick. This project took 8 of them. 

I used structural flange plates from Lowes to mount the studs to the wall. In total there were 9 of them that cost $6 each. 

I used structural tee's and cross tee's to complete the frame. There were a total of 8 tees at $7 each and 4 cross tees at $10 each.

I used some old black table cloths for the shroud and zip ties them to the frame so those didn't cost anything extra. 

Now for the screen... Its by far the most expensive item of the lot. I bought a 10'x7.5' screen from Carl's Place. It was $277 after tax (shipping was free). I wanted to give the screen extra support and cover underneath the open area so I added a 10'x9' mesh tarp from Harbor Freight. I think that guy was like $30.

Impact Screen: $277

Tarp: $30

Frame conduit: $80

Mounting fittings: $150

Total Cost: $540

I'm just using my 3rd car garage for this project so it's hardly a permanent structure or anything I care about looking nice. It's just for me to hit balls at by myself so I didn't go all out to fancy it up. At any rate, it saved me quite a bit of money building it out for myself instead of buying something premade. 

For the launch monitor hardware, I purchased the least expensive unit with decent reviews I could find which was the Garmin R10. I found a used on on Mercari for $350. I also found a cheap projector for $100 on Facebook marketplace. I already had a hitting mat that I purchased years ago, but they run around $100-200 for a decent one. I already had an old computer sitting around that I could use for the software. I built it over 10 years ago so you don't even remotely have to have anything state of the art to run something like Awesome Golf which I've been using. 

 

All in all I built a golf launch monitor bay in my third car garage for just around $1000 including the launch monitor. If I continue on using it I may consider upgrading not only the Garmin unit I'm using, but also the impact structure and it's surroundings. Maybe it's use could expand to have some buddies over to play some sim golf or even just pull up chairs and watch a game on the projector. 

If you're on a budget and you have the space... it's totally possible to build out something like this without dropping 5-6 grand or more. I use it as a practice space when I can't get to the course which with young kids is not as often as I'd like. 

I hope it inspires someone.

[IndyBonzo]

That’s fantastic.  Nice work!

[GolferXY]

 Nice breakdown of costs and parts.  Thank you!

[keifndem]

Love the breakdown of the parts used on this build. I have been using a hitting mat, net, and just added the Skytrak plus monitor. Want to do a hitting screen/bay with a projector next and your article has been super helpful for doing this on a budget. 

[RickM71]

Have you had any issues with balls hitting your frame and either bounce back or damaging the frame? 

I recently got back into golf by building a simulator bay in my basement. I have kids using it so opted to spend a little more and get something that seemed safer from ricochet. 

I went with the Carl's Place DIY custom measured to my available space. I have had a few worm burners bounce back off the bottom wire. Even with there not being any pipe down there, the ball can come back pretty fast. My bigger worry from a safety standpoint is a ricochet off the side pipes in the front of the bay. I tried multiple things and the best I could come up with was using a small amount of memory foam and then covering it with pipe insulation to hold it in place. So far no one has been hit by a ricochet, but with kids I feel I can't be too careful. 

Like you, I opted for the Garmin R10. It is a great device, and paired with GS Pro it worked very well. GS Pro is fantastic, especially with kids. I'll probably make a separate write up with that at some point as most people are probably unaware of the amazing games and fictional courses, in addition to the real courses. 

I tried to integrate the camera based putting which was super fun when it worked, but had misreads more often than not. 

I also was starting to get more concerned that side spin wasn't as accurate as I'd like. I seemed to develop a pretty bad hook on my driver that the Garmin would sometimes read as a small draw. 

I've since splurged and went with a Foresight Gc3, as it seems these units are the "gold standard" for ball data accuracy. It documents my hook drives painfully accurately. And putting actually works very well. 

My biggest challenge now is keeping my body in shape to handle all the swings I'm taking.