Building a Puppy Pool Ramp - A Summer DIY

2 Materials
$25
2 Hours
Easy

One of my biggest fears is that our fur babies will drown in the swimming pool, especially our smallest one, EeeeeDeeeee. You may remember her from our paint brush hook post. She gets so excited when the kids play and doesn't watch where she's going. She can swim, but her legs are just too short to push herself out onto dry ground. We shopped around but dog pool ramps are hard to come by and they can be horribly expensive. Don't get me wrong, I would pay a bucket load to keep our fur babies safe, but if you're a DIY-er then it's easy enough to custom make one at a fraction of the cost.

To make the pool ramp you'll need:




  • Industrial strength canvas
  • Hacksaw or pipe cutter
  • PVC Pipe and Fittings:
  • 6 x 90-degree elbow pieces2 x T-pieces1 PVC pipe
  • PVC adhesive
  • Pool noodle
  • Zip ties and rope

This pool ramp is suitable for small to medium dogs. Start by measuring your fur babies. The pool ramp needs to be long enough for them to sit on and at least 20 cm (about 8”) wider than they are.

Cut a piece of canvas or rubber mat to size using the above measurements. The next thing we need to do it make a PVC frame to fit around the canvas. Using the canvas as a template, cut the PVC pipe into two long pieces and two shorter pieces with a hacksaw. We'll use the 90 degree elbows to join the PVC pipes together to form the frame. The piccy below shows the bottom of the frame.

The top will look almost the same, except we'll be adding the T-pieces to the shorter piece to stabilize the pool ramp.

Once all the pieces have been cut, glue the bits together to finish off the base of the frame. Make sure the two T-pieces point upwards.

To finish off the frame insert two 12 cm (4.5″) PVC pieces into an elbow and glue them into the T-pieces. Finally cut a piece of PVC pipe to join them together.

Attach the canvas you cut earlier to the frame with zip ties and add a pool noodle, that's been cut to size, underneath the canvas for extra floatation. One can never be too careful when it comes to our fur babies right!!? icon icon

Use weatherproof rope to secure the safety ramp to the side of the pool.

Please remember to teach your fur baby where the ramp is. It took EeeeeDeeeee about 1/2 hour to learn that the ramp is her “safety net”. Now, whenever she falls in, she heads straight for it.


Psst - For additional fur baby safety tips and more photos of EeeeeDeeeee and a bug or two testing the pool ramp out, come say hi on our blog.


Until next time, please stay safe and hope you all have a beautiful Summer

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Michelle Leslie
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  • Peggy L Burnette Peggy L Burnette on May 27, 2020

    Thank you so much for sharing, We have cats and dogs. We have a fence around our pool but that doesn't stop the cats. Can't wait to get my husband on this project. Thanks again.

  • Cherie Cherie on Oct 02, 2021

    Such a great idea! One of our dogs likes to just lay in the water so this may be a perfect thing for him to float around on!!! I'll just need a bunch more pool noodles! Great instructions!

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