u/GilletteMC

Have a whirlpool fridge that I had to manually defrost back at the beginning of April. New (to us) home, fridge came with the house. Noticed the fan started making a lot of noise in the freezer, there was about 2x the amount of ice as seen in the pic & it was coming into contact with the fan. Second picture is after I fully defrosted.

Flash forward five and a half weeks, and the fan is making the same noise. Freezer needs thawed out once again. How come it’s doing this? Is there a part/something I can do to avoid this in the future? It worked fine for about a year leading up to this.

Have seen many people build strike mats online & thought I’d share my build process as well. I took some suggestions from other posts along with minor changes.

Layers: three

- Bottom is 1/8” plywood
- Second layer is 1/2” foamular insulation board
- Top layer is a cheaper striking mat that I bought a few months back from academy sports. It’s got about 1/2” of foam on it already so I was able to avoid needing gym tiles or some kind of foam for another layer underneath of the turf.
-hitting strip is gungho holy grail 12”x30”

I cut the foam board and plywood to match the size of the striking mat, decided where I wanted my hitting strip to go, and then used a contractor knife to cut the striking mat. I cut from the bottom (foam) side of the mat through the turf and it came out very clean as a result.

I then laid the mat over the foam board, traced hitting strip hole, then used a jig saw to cut it out.

Using loctite PL300 (it’s designed for foam board, other types may eat the plastic/rubber), I then glued them all together. I used 2 tubes but I think you’d be better off with three. I think I’ll have to go back and add more between the turf and the foam board eventually. Also, don’t be an idiot like myself and spread the loctite across the entire board. Remember the insert section as it won’t need any loctite. Spent a good 15-20 cleaning that mess.

Let it set for a day, and then put in my hitting strip. It’s lightweight so I can move it easy, the strip helps with knowing ball placement for the mevo launch monitor, it’s also a LOT easier on the joints and will give you pretty accurate numbers if you fat or thin the shot. With the old mat I was wrecking my trail elbow, and I couldn’t get decent numbers/contact with the ball. Another issue was that it’d shift as I swung on the original mat, shifting the ball during my swing.

If you’re got something similar as a setup at home I cannot recommend this enough. It makes my sim setup so much more enjoyable.

Pricing:
- plywood was $25, the formular board about $13, loctite was $6 a tube ($12 total but probably use 3 for $18), hitting strip $180, golf mat came from academy sports I believe it was $140ish.

I’m going to add some sort of rubber feet or furniture padding so that I can prevent the mat from shifting, as well as find some form of border to make the sides more aesthetically pleasing. It doesn’t shift nearly as much as what the old mat by itself would move, but I’d still like to eliminate all of it.

Hope this helps someone!