H/D whirly washine line pole socket?

[T i m]

Hi All,

I popped into Mums yesterday and noticed her whirly washing line canted over at an akward angle.

I mentioned it to her and she said she's poked sticks down the side of it to try to keep it upright (bless).

Anyway, I was thinking how I could make it more substantial for her and before I started making a sub lawn angle iron frame or concrete footing etc I though I'd ask here?

I think I'd feel better with fifting a bit of the turf and doing something underneath than trying to drive some angle iron down around the tube (going wherever it wants).

Do they make a tubular socket spike (like a 'Met-Post' for washing lines) ?

All the best ..

T i m

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 08 Apr 2004, T i m wrote

-snip re: garden airer-

Yup; like a MetPost, you can either hammer it into solid ground or set it in concrete. (I've never bothered concreting ours, and it's still good and solid after 8 years.)

(I think I picked ours up at B&Q.)

[T i m]

Thanks for that Mate ;-)

Got one from B&Q.

They had a cloice of 2.

One was a plated steel tube where the lower half had been swaged over to form a tapered 'X' section (like a tent peg) and another lighter gauge fabricated thing with 3 different sized collers that dropped into the top to take different sized whirly line upright tubes.

I went for the former and just hope it's the right internal diameter?

I might also be tempted to 'drill' a thin pilot hole in the ground first to help the thing go in upright!

All the best ..

T i m

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 08 Apr 2004, T i m wrote

Yeah: I'd go for the simpler and heavier-gauge one, too. Even if it's not exactly the right diameter, you should be able to create your own plastic packing/tube to make the pole stand upright.

(I seem to recall doing this with one we had at a previous house -- I think I found some plastic tubing that was close enough, and fit that down the length of the tube -- that seemed more secure to me than just having a collar at the top.)

Probably an OK idea; I didn't bother when I did ours -- I just put a stick into it to hammer it in, and kept checking with a spirit level in the early stages to make sure I was going down straight.

Good luck!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember T i m saying something like:

All I used was a piece of scaffold pole and a sledgehammer and chucked a pebble down the 'ole before inserting the twirly thingy.