The Hills hoist taunts me with its wiry eye.

[reddragdiva]

Well, not a Hills hoist. Instead, a ridiculously pissweak plastic and aluminium thing from Homebase, a large home depravements warehouse famous for its vast selection of precisely not quite the thing you were looking for, that just happens to be just around the corner from my house. This is, of course, fatal to newly-moved-in suburbanites.

Today's suburban slapstick involves said pissweak rotary clothes hoist and a spike for mounting it in the ground. The instructions strongly suggested mounting it in concrete, but we (well, I) went "naaah" and we got the screw-in mounting spike. arkady got the plastic spike into the ground with some effort, got it level (the spike has a spirit level built into it. Really.) and put the hoist into it and loaded it with washing.

It proceeded to tip over at an alarming angle. What does a good suburbanite do? Improvise! We got some spiky shards of wood that had been left behind the shed. Arkady proceeded to break them up with a good kick, got a hammer (Arkady had a mallet years ago, but not here), put another bit of wood over the end of the spike to spread the blow, and propped up the hoist with it. The hoist promptly leant to the other side. Break off another spike, bludgeon it in and let go of the hoist. Hoist leans at right angle to both — break off another spike, bludgeon it in. Hang up just-washed and thus quite heavy bedspread, hoist leans in the one direction left for it to lean, repeat. Hoist still leaning, give up and decide to concrete it in tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

The hoist package contains detailed instructions on how to mix and pour the concrete base. There's a bag of gravel in the shed and there's Homebase around the corner for sand and cement. What could possibly go wrong?

Comments

[hirez]

You can get boil-in-the-bag concrete from all good DIY superstores and most crap ones. It's excellent stuff for all your hardcore-based immobilisation needs.

[reddragdiva]

Arkady is sufficiently delighted that we have a shed. She understands Shedding. She thinks of a shed as a place to do things involving toxic fumes and/or explosions. There is a list of Things Arkady Is Not Allowed To Do. You two need to sit down and concoct the Final Solution to Humanity using only things available from a Homebase.

[heliumbreath]

Don't bother with the extra-large-size economy bag of concrete, figuring you'll have lots left over for the next project. The stuff is amazingly hygroscopic in storage, and will provide you with a lump of concrete for your future lump-of-concrete needs.

[greylock]

I concreted our new mail box in the ground a few years ago.

It was surprisingly easy, considering my complete lack of home improvement skills, so I can only conclude that nothing can possibly go wrong from trying to install a washing line assuming you did the whole properly and ensure it doesn't set at a jaunty angle.

(And that was using conventional concrete, not this new fangled boil-in-the-bag stuff, whatever that might be).

[reddragdiva]

Instant concrete, basically: just add water, pour, wait ten minutes and it's initially set - so you don't have to mix up the cement, sand and gravel yourself.

I'm mostly worried about how much we'll need. The hoist instructions (which assume you're not using the instant stuff) specify 17 litres (0.6 cubic feet), which would weigh about 17×2.4 = 40.8kg. Instant concrete comes in 2.5kg and 10kg tubs. I have full confidence in arkady's manly abilities over mind, thankfully.

[greylock]

Oh, that sounds like what I used. I grabbed either a 5kg or 15kg bag from Bunnings for the letter box and just used the whole thing because, well, why not? I am sure you'll figure it out, but with no real reasoning at all 40kg seems fair (if not overkill) considering the weight of wet washing.

But I suck at physics, and use drying racks.

[redcountess]

When the old rotary hoist here snapped after a dead silver birch fell on it, the landlord replaced it with one of those lightweight jobs. Even though he did cement it in (albeit craply as is his m.o) it leant horribly when I put my big blue dressing gown on it to dry.