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Here is the maze I used in 2002. At first glance it would seem that the party
tent wouldn't be strong enough to stand up to the abuses of TOTs crashing into
the walls from being frightened. However, once your walls are up and the tarp is
stretched tight, you would be more than just surprised at how very strong the
entire structure is. Not only are the walls nearly indestructible when subjected
to bodies pushing and falling, but there is no need for any type of attachment
to the ground or floor at all if you set this up inside and out of the wind.
 This maze that offered 5 distinct scene rooms for 2002 took me 2 hours to
assemble by myself. I set up my maze inside my garage, since I decided I am all
done with rain and wind
destroying
my haunt. And even though it would be very simple to fit this with a water tight
roof and stake it to the ground, I see no reason to go to that extent. IMHO a
two-car garage suffices very well for a nice, balanced, high impact home haunt.
I do have some outdoor images as well, but not anything I worry about getting
rained on like animatronics. I did have a pneumatic prop outside in 2002, but
that was brought inside each night.
The Crawford spring clip #1320
works on 1" conduit. You can find
them in both Home Depot and Ace
Hardware. Here is a typical spring clip like you've seen holding up brooms all
your life, but they really have many uses. I tried three different brands before
finding a solid fit to the pipe. Crawford 3/4" to 1 1/8" spring clip
worked much better than the other two to attach the 5 3/4" wide 1/2"
thick fence boards to the uprights securely like you see here. The clips would
allow for a very secure attachment for even full sheets of plywood. To secure
boards that may be contacted by a TOT directly I used a bungee cord through the
loops of clips and then one wrap around the pipe to keep them from getting
knocked off. I would suggest using the bungee cord on all four corners of you
use large plywood sections for walls. The front walls you see here are only
clipped on as they weren't in any direct path for the TOTs to easily run into
and we had no problems of any boards coming down during our 2 night run.
 Here is how the haunt looked in 2002. The layout I chose routes the
victim into the haunt through the right side of the grand entrance and down a
narrow hallway that eventually worked its way in a circle back out the left side
of the entrance. It took about an hour and a half to stretch all the tarps up
for the walls. Once I had fitted each section of fence board with one spring
clip on each end it only took about 10 - 20 minutes to clip them in place. The
only areas I used the boards inside were to cordon off the TOTs from each room
scene. Those were mostly all reinforced with a bungee cord in case they got run
into during the night. I had no problems at all with the wood trim pieces on
either night we were running. The largest night of the two, Halloween, we saw
almost 300 TOTs.
In the
shot here you can see how most of the haunt looked inside.
Throughout the maze I used camo netting for a ceiling except where I needed
extra height for pneumatic events. For a finishing touch I covered some of the
walls inside with both camo netting and shredded open weave fabric to give it
more texture. This shot is obviously taken in daylight, but with the haunt dark
at night, the tarp is very camouflaged.
Overall, I am really excited to have a fast and easy wall system finally.
When I broke down the next Saturday after Halloween, the tarps took about an
hour to remove and fold up for storage and the pipe frame took 45 minutes for
one person to fully disassemble and store. The wood comes down in about 10 to 15
minutes, as most pieces are reinforced with a bungee in case of any direct
impact from a victim.
Using a few extra 3-way connectors I had purchased, I made this shallow rack
from some of the pipe to store all the pipes in. What really amazed me when it
was all put away was the extremely small area the pipes, wood and tarp took to
store. The stack of pipes you see here is only about 12" high and about a
foot deep with the wood planks enough for the entire haunt going up to about 4'
high in the same rack. So in effect, the structure of the haunt takes up the
same space as a bicycle. The tarps only take up about another area about 2/3
what this rack does. since I plan to use the same maze layout for next year, I
marked the back of each fence board where it went so it would go back on in
moments.
The best thing about the way the tent wall system works is how completely
versatile it is. You can change this at a whim and make it any size you could
possibly want. Not to mention that since the pipes and fittings are galvanized,
the frame to this should last easily for the rest of my life, so there is no
costs later down the road except for replacement of tarps or expansion. After
two years of use now the tarps are still in almost new condition.
So there is a look at what I call the Tent Wall System for home haunts. If
you use the heavy gauge 1" conduit and the heavy gauge tarps for your walls
they will last for many years of heavy abuse. You can see more of what the walls
inside the haunt looked like by visiting my webpage covering
Schock
Manor 2002. Have fun with yours
and post back to me any new
breakthroughs using the Tent Wall
System that you may develop!
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