Storing Your Pit & Poles

By Alan Roark, Vault Coach, Amherst Steele HS, Amherst, Oh

Here’s a quick explanation of how we store our pit and poles at Amherst. I have a basic rule, we take really good care of everything because I don’t want to replace stuff, I want to buy more poles. Our last UCS pit lasted 13 years and we sold it for $3000. Our UCS standards are still great after 18 years.

The basics are: 

Store all sections up on their sides so that any water in the pit has a chance to drain out over the summer and winter.

Leave a 6’ air gap between all sections so that they have a chance to dry.

Store all sections on pallets to allow water to escape from them and dry.

We place a tarp over the top pad so that our cat Martin doesn’t want to camp out there. We purposely leave to top pad on our trailer so football isn’t tempted to use it.

Add rope constraints to keep sections from falling over while stored.

Vent the building so air can flow through.  If there are roof vents, add a vent in the lower wall.  This greatly reduces the heat in the summer.

Get a cat if you can to take care of any mice that might live in your barn. Otherwise, use mousetraps or poisons to protect your $10,000 pit.  (Mouse or pit?  ... easy choice for me.) (And Martin)

                                    

Put your poles on racks on the wall. Get them off of the floor.   I made the supports out of 3/4 “ plywood.

Put your poles in plastic pipe tubes or paper tubes to protect them from anyone who might hit them while storing other equipment.  We use 4” corrugated plastic drainpipe from Carter Lumber.  It works great.