We had a microburst-like event here at Bearidisel! On June 28th 2011 I had just come in from a lovely swim in warm weather and partly cloudy skys. A few minutes later I noticed the trees were acting wildly! I opened the door and saw a tremendous wind had come up out of nowhere! I wanted to go out on the deck and put down the large umbrella but it looked too dangerous to venture out, it was that violent. As I watched, the umbrella snapped off at the base and was hurled into the back yard taking down a couple of begonias. There was other mayhem as shown in the photos, and this article documents what happened and what I did to get everything repaired and ready for our July 4th event that was only a few days away when this happened!
The table and umbrella were lifted up off the concrete stand which did not move, and was flung into the trellis!
Amazingly the glass top did not break but the perimeter steel rim came loose
I thought it was going to be an ordeal but it went back on easily
Here is a better view of the trellis bent over. The trellis is 12 feet high and 40 long, and was bent perhaps 35 degrees.
I used a hefty tie-down strap with a large steel hook lasso-style to engage the top rail of the trellis
The plants on the trellis are surprisingly heavy. It took a considerable effort to get the unit erect
The now anchored strap is tightened until the bent support rods are straightened out and the trellis is vertical again
A 2x6 on the other side helps support the trellis against winds and a guy wire was installed to stablize the trellis
These pieces hold the spokes of the umbrella. The umbrella fabric is very durable, but they deliberately used cotton thread on these so they'd self-destruct after a few years
I won't let them get away with it. I got monofilament and a needle and I sewed those pieces onto the fabric and they will be in place until Kingdom come
I did quite a few of them ...
One got lost so I fashioned a cup out of parachute nylon ...
More cotton thread ... new monofilament holding the spoke to the umbrella
If you calculate the azimuth of the before/after pictures, you'd see getting everything fixed took 12 hours! 8am-8pm
The shaft of the 9 foot umbrella broke so I fixed it with aggressive polyurethane glue. Clamped and set overnight
This sphere of wood has to have the coated wire in the groove to allow properr opening of the umbrella ... how to get it back in?
If something doesn't work right, whack it with a Hammer ...
... today an umbrella, tomorrow ....
Life without an umbrella ...
... life with an umbrella!
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