How to shade a kid's swing set with a market umbrella

It doesn’t seem to matter how big a stand you have on the bottom of your market umbrella, it will still manage to blow over and break the first time it is subjected to anything more than a slight breeze.

I was given a market umbrella for Christmas one year and despite being mounted in a reasonably heavy stand, by February I had repaired it at least 3 times.

Fearing it would not survive another topple, I hunted around the backyard for a more solid fixture to mount it on.

It was a typical hot summer’s day – too hot for the kids to venture outside. They were cooped up in the house for about the 4th day in a row - board and driving my wife nuts.

As I scanned the back-yard for something solid, I remembered telling the kids earlier that day it was too hot to play on the swing. Then it hit me… “Swings are solid” I thought to myself excitedly as I realised I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

I set off to the shed with the umbrella and some scrap steal and welded up a bracket to hold the umbrella on top of the swing.

The result was quite good. I designed the bracket to mount in the centre of the horizontal beam of the swing. It had two mounting holes which aligned with the bolts that supported the centre swing. Installation is as simple as removing the nuts for the centre swing, slipping the bracket over the bolts and reinstalling the nuts.

The umbrella then slides into a piece of steel pipe attached to the bracket.

The umbrella provided a lot of shade to the centre swing, and adequate shade to the side swings during the middle of the day when the sun is directly over head.

I was happy with the result and so were the kids. It stopped the umbrella blowing over all the time, and provided some shade for the kids to play on the swing.

About 3 months later, I extended the swing frame and mounted an extra swing to cater for the newest arrival to our family. This had made the swing wider, and 1 umbrella was no longer providing enough shade. In addition, the swing frame has a slide mounted on the side which receives no shade at all.

Time to mount a second umbrella.

My main, self imposed constraint in making the mounting brackets was not to modify the swing frame at all. My brackets had to align with the existing, factory set holes and bolts already present in the swing frame.

For this reason, the bracket I made for the single umbrella design could not be used in the 2 umbrella configuration.

I designed 2 new brackets that mount near the edges of the swing frame utilizing the existing bolts that join the legs to the horizontal beam.

The 2 umbrella version provides shade to all the swings, including the extension and the slide. The umbrellas overlap slightly in the middle to provide adequate shade to the middle swing. This results in 1 umbrella being higher than the other.