Floating speakers are actually quite straight-forward to make – it’s really just a matter of getting the right ­materials and measuring twice and cutting once.

You’ll need:

• A pair of small speakers; I used speakers from an MP3 speaker set I got at a promotion somewhere and also recycled the mounting rings and speaker grills.
• A PVC inspection pipe. You can find this at any plumbing supplier.
• A male pipe cover and a female pipe cover
• PVC glue and a Glue gun
• A thick plastic bag and an MP3 Player

The housing for the speakers will be made of a PVC inspection pipe. This gives you a number of advantages over using some other plastic container (although you could if you wanted to), the inspection pipe is built to be waterproof and the two access points are both sealed with rubber seals.

The first thing to do is to cut away any plastic ridges on the front surface of the inspection cover of the pipe, so that you have a flat surface for the speakers to be mounted on. Now carefully measure and cut out two holes the same size as the front of the speakers. I used a hole-cutter that fits on a drill to do this.

Once you have the holes drilled, you will need to waterproof the speakers. This can be a fiddly job, so have all your materials ready and laid out as timing is important. Heat up the glue-gun and apply a thin bead of glue around the rim of the speaker. As the glue starts cooling, stretch over the plastic from a thick plastic bag over the speaker.

Trim the plastic around the edge of the speaker and glue them into place on the inspection cover, ensuring that no gaps, through which water can leak in, are present. Now just attach the speaker grills with the recycled mounting rings form the MP3 speaker set.

Optionally, you can attach a strap to your system so you can tie it off somewhere in the pool.
Once everything is assembled, glue on the female cover of the pipe, using PVC glue, plug in your MP3 player and screw on the speaker assembly. You can access the MP3 player via the round male cover, as it goes into the rubber-sealed end of the pipe.

Test out your speakers. If they tend to roll forward into the water, then just fill the pipe with ballast, like a 1 kg dumbbell, to keep the speakers pointing up at about a 45 degree angle. [AG]