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We need a parasol base. We've got a stupidly heavy 3m wide parasol. For every review of any weight base we look at, there's someone saying something like "could tether a hot air balloon" and someone else saying "falls over if you breathe on it!"
So does anyone know how heavy a base we need for a 3m parasol (a straight one, not a lean over.)
Steal one from a pub. No one will notice.
I’ve got two fairly big, ~2 metres, parasols from B&M, rather a nice dark red, with multiple ribs like a Chinese parasol, and as I already had a round cast metal one from an old parasol I bought one of theirs, it’s steel, square, and called the New York base, and it was much more stable. The round one blows over all to easily, so I got another square New York one on Monday. They’re currently £16, instead of around £30-ish.
B&M also do circular weights with a slot to fit around the centre tube to help hold them down a bit more, but if it’s windy, the best option is to just let the parasol down. I’ve got a bunch of cast iron cats-eye bases I dug out of a resurfaced byway, each weighs about five kilos, so I can put several onto the flat steel base to stop it lifting.
If it’s really windy, I just lay them flat onto the patio, I’m not gonna be sitting outside anyway!
It’s not so much weight as stability, the square shape takes more force to lift up one side. You can get larger plastic bases that you can fill with water, which might be better for your larger parasol, but I’m not sure who sells those. They’re bulky, though, and take up more space.
Would those b&M ones work to hold a laundry whirlygig in place? Ours is listing pisa-like at the moment due to being driven into shallow soil and I can't be arsed makaing a proper concrete base in the patio.
@stevious - mmmmmm, doubt it, those rotary washing lines, which I guess is what you mean, carry a lot of weight, probably far too much for one of those bases. The larger water-filled plastic ones might, though, I’m really not sure. I had one of those in the centre of my patio, my parents put it in donks ago, my step-dad just dug a small hole, about a foot deep, mixed up some cement, put it into the hole and stuck the pole upright into the cement, then laid paving slabs around it, just knocking a couple of corners off to fit around the pole.
Took a bit of getting out more recently, though.
Put it through a hole in the centre of your outdoor table, and a few screwed angle brackets around the bottom, and rawplugged into the patio or screw into decking.
Take it down when summers over.
@countzero - I suspected as much. Also the 'just dig a hole, etc etc etc' is precisely the faff I cannot be bothered with. Gonna shop online for a new step-dad instead.
Put it through a hole in the centre of your outdoor table, and a few screwed angle brackets around the bottom, and rawplugged into the patio or screw into decking.
STW: Never knowingly under-engineered.
😂
Or the boring answer, slip a car/van wheel over the base if you need more weight. They're ten a penny at dumps or on country roads and can easily be tarted up to look nicer.
Whirligigs just need a spike hammered into the ground.
I've got a thing that looks like a big marble stone square, like a big tile, with a shaft on the top to take the parasol shaft and a thumb screw. It pretty much relies on the wee hole going through the table to stop it form tipping over I think.
Whirligigs just need a spike hammered into the ground
Agreed. This works brilliantly if ‘the ground’ isn’t 10cm of soil on top of concrete/rubble.