Washing line: middle game

Doing something about the parlous state of our rotary washing line had been gestating for a while, but I was really moving into action by the time of the visit to B&Q noticed at reference 1.

The first problem was that while the rotary came with four struts to keep the four arms horizontal, there was nothing much fixing their angular separation, which, for the four arms, should have been around 90°, that is to say a right angle. And one of the arms was so adrift as to almost have ripped out of its central fixing.

At the very least, one needed something to fix the angles while installing the line. A wooden jig would have been best, but it would have taken a while to make such a thing, so I settled for the naval uncle's engineering square and bamboo canes, tied on with sisal. Which seemed OK when I first installed them, but did not turn out that well later. The bindings worked loose and I would have done better to have used mild steel wire - although I think I have run out of that and need to buy a new roll.

Installation of the canes required a certain amount of pulling about of the old line, but I did not go so far as to take it out completely. However, the number of breaks in the outer casing, some kind of rubbery green plastic, was steadily going up, with the plastic having been slowly rotted by years in the sun, frost and rain outside.

Not a proper job, but it was a lot better than it was, with far fewer hanging loops of line and it would buy me some time.

The next step was easy enough, not involving standing up or going outside, or anything like that.

But this morning, I remembered trying to find out where it came from, without remembering what the outcome was. This morning I failed, so had to resort to Gemini and after an opening question and three or four supplementaries, we got there. It was indeed primarily an Amazon operation, fronted in Austria, warehoused in Germany and importing some if its stuff, including this line, from China. Masked by various other brands with similar names as far as Bing was concerned. Regular Google would probably not have been much better.

And there matters rested for about a week - after which I moved into action again.

Step one, strip out the old line and walk it down the garden so that I can hank it up for storage. Although it actually ended up in the bin. This had been the fate of its predecessor, having hung in the roof of the garage for year, and never having 'come in' for anything.

Along the way I was reminded of the strength of a belay around a post of some sort, in this case a tree, in the Hornblower books perhaps a belaying pin. So if you have a rope with a considerable pull on it, perhaps from the wind in a sail, if you take a half turn of that rope around a post, a man holding onto the loose end can contain a surprising amount of pull.

A matter which also featured in Applied Mathematics at A-level in my day: all to do, as I recall, with coefficients of friction.

Step two, open up the new line, which promptly curled up into what looked like a right old mess. Walked it down the garden, slowly sorting it out. Remembering the yachting adage from our one-day charter on the Solent, some years ago now, to the effect that one should not try and untangle what is not tangled. You will make it much worse! And the man was right: with a little patience the line unravelled of its own accord and was led safely around the ash tree at the top of the back lawn.

I wondered how one would manage in a small garden, not fit for walking washing lines? Use the pavement outside?

The snap above shows an intermediate stage of its installation.

This one when I packed up for the day. Not yet satisfied with the way that I had fixed the line to the ends of the arms - but I had done enough for one day.

Not yet open for business.

Then, late yesterday afternoon, I had another go, having thought out how better to fix the last turn of the line to the arms of the rotary. Still not entirely satisfied, but BH is giving it a go. I shall probably need to have another fiddle after the new line has settled down a bit. All 50m of it and only just long enough.

PS 1: waking a little early this morning, I got to thinking about washing lines again. Maybe stretching a line around four arms at right angles was not a stable equilibrium solution at all. Rather an unstable solution, which needed force to keep it in place; force which had been a bit thin on the ground.

The first thing was the triangle above; intended to model a line stretched between just three arms, the two on either side fixed and the other one (DB) flapping about. This suggests to me a tendency for the end of that arm to slip down to the left, towards A, thus reducing the tension in the line, a function of the length ABC.

A slightly more realistic view of the line is given above. My suggestion is that the result of the triangle generalises to the spiral, which could be viewed as a sequence of such triangles.

A suggestion which is some way short of proof, but together with the evidence of behaviour in real life, is enough to make me think that the manufacturer of the rotary washing line should have provided four removable struts to provide angular stability. Removeable to allow for folding the line away for moving it about or when the careful housewife wants to fold it away into her garden shed, out of view, when it is not being used. Easy enough at factory time, rather a bigger deal now the thing is in the garden and very firmly stuck in its hole. 

My present compromise is to fix the line at its five outermost points, an improvement on the previous four, which left one of the four outermost segments if line unprotected, as it were. BH pleased enough so far, but we shall see how things go with a bit of use. Washing in heavy rain can be quite heavy. Heavy rain which was advertised but which has failed to materialise so far today.

On the other hand, we have had an unplanned water outage starting at around 12:45, it now being 15:50. I think such a thing has happened before, but it is fairly rare. Maybe the gas board - or rather their sub-contractor JDT - has disturbed something while digging up the roads on our estate for gas. For JDT see, for example, reference 4.

PS 2: the pole being stuck in its hole was investigated on 23rd July, but somehow slipped through the net. A matter which will be rectified shortly.

PS 3: 16:45: water supply has now been restored. Gemini was not able to tell me about the leak, but he was able to point me at reference 5, which knew about it, even if it had not yet reported the water coming back on line. Not the gas people at all, as it turns out, rather a burst main near Malden Rushett. Might have been a bother for Chessington Garden Centre and Chessington World of Adventures, our minor and major visitor attractions. Busy road too.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/leatherhead.html.

Reference 2: https://www.simplysmooth.de/. The brand.

Reference 3: https://www.flipfeld.com/. The owner of the brand.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/fake-205.html.