How to Make a Playpen for Dogs Out of PVC

If you need to keep your dogs in a pen but don't want to spend the money to buy one, you could do a lot worse than building one from scrap PVC pipe. PVC pipe is hard wearing, reasonably chew proof and light weight, so the finished pen can be shifted around the garden or brought indoors without difficulty. Building with pre-molded joins also makes the pen easy to assemble and adapt to your particular needs.

Things You'll Need

  • PVC pipe
  • Saw
  • PVC joins
  • PVC cleaner
  • PVC glue
  • Chain link fencing mesh
  • Bolt cutter
  • Wire
  • Wire cutter
  • Corkscrew pegs
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Instructions

    • 1

      Determine how much floor space your dogs need. This will depend on how many dogs you have, the size of the dogs, how long they will be enclosed, and how active they are. The following instructions will assume a pen 10 feet by 10 feet, but you can adapt this measurement to your needs.

    • 2

      Cut eight, 10-foot lengths of pipe. Join them at the corners with three-socket PVC corner joins to make two, 10-foot squares. Clean the ends of the pipes with PVC cleaner and stick them into the joins with PVC glue. Leave one side of one join of each square unglued.

    • 3

      Cut four, 4-foot lengths of pipe. Use these to join the two squares together vertically. Again glue the joins. Position the unglued joins from the two squares above each other so that the pen can be popped open and closed to let the dogs in and out.

    • 4

      Wrap each side individually in chain link fencing mesh. Use bolt cutters to cut the appropriate sized sections. Fix in place by coiling the edges of the fencing around the pipes and twisting lengths of wire around it. Make sure any exposed wire tips are folded away and twisted to the outside of the pen.

    • 5

      Hook the ends of the corkscrew pegs into wire at the bottom of the pen. These can be twisted in and out of the ground to secure the pen in place as needed. Make loops of wire and loop them around the unglued corner of the pen. Twist one end of each loop around a peg or similar object to form a toggle. This allows you to open and close the pen with ease.