Build Your Own Mailbox

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Installing Your Mailbox

The first step to installation is deciding on the location. You should always make sure that your mailbox is in the most convenient place for the carrier. The most accessible location is the far right margin of your driveway entry (if you are looking out from of your house). If a carrier approaches your home from the right, the box will have to be across the road. If you get the mail coming home from work, locate the box so you can pick it up from your own vehicle—20 feet or so before the turn-in to your driveway. If you don't own the field across the road, make sure you ask the owner for permission to install there. If there's another home across the road, ask if you can't locate your box alongside the neighbor's—perhaps you can share a post.

For a stationary installation, bury a post two feet deep in the ground, and tamp rocks and soil around the area. Or a better idea is to anchor it with concrete and/or stones in a bed of good-draining gravel. Dig your hole 2 1/2 feet deep and no wider than necessary (a clamshell posthole digger will make a quick foot-wide hole). Then tamp soil at the bottom, and compress the sides of the hole with a length of stout wood. Put a six-inch layer of gravel at the bottom, and tamp well. Next, set in the post and add another six inches of gravel, tamping well around the post. Prepare an 80-pound sack of concrete mix according to package directions and pour it in around the post to make a collar (adding in clean rocks if you have them). Use a level to get the post square, and let the concrete cure overnight. Then fill the hole with soil, tamping one final time.

The great thing about using posts of metal-plumbing pipe is that they'll last forever. Just be sure you anchor in a 6-to12-inch-thick pad of concrete and rocks set a foot below ground level. Use a five- or six foot-long galvanized pipe (threaded at one end) to use for the vertical member, a threefoot-long pipe for the horizontal, and an elbow. When you apply the plumbers joint compound to the threads, use monkey wrenches to join the pipes tight to the elbow in an upside-down "L" Then with an electric drill and high-speed bit, drill two up-and-down holes in the horizontal member, and bolt the box-sup port board to it. Give the whole thing several coats of rust-proofing spray paint and let dry.

Another idea is to make a counter-weighted pipe post using a "T" fitting in place of the elbow. Center one end of an 18" length of pipe in a coffee can and tamp wet concrete mix around it, rounding and smoothing the top. When the concrete sets, affix the threaded end to the inner side of the "T." Make sure you paint the can especially well to prevent rust.

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