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Catastrophic Wind Blasts Bearidise! PDF Print E-mail
Written by Arthur Knight Hammer   
Sunday, 24 July 2011 00:00

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!

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The table and umbrella were lifted up off the concrete stand which did not move, and was flung into the trellis!
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Amazingly the glass top did not break but the perimeter steel rim came loose
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I thought it was going to be an ordeal but it went back on easily
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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.
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I used a hefty tie-down strap with a large steel hook lasso-style to engage the top rail of the trellis
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The plants on the trellis are surprisingly heavy.  It took a considerable effort to get the unit erect
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The now anchored strap is tightened until the bent support rods are straightened out and the trellis is vertical again
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A 2x6 on the other side helps support the trellis against winds and a guy wire was installed to stablize the trellis
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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
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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
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I did quite a few of them ...
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One got lost so I fashioned a cup out of parachute nylon ...
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More cotton thread ... new monofilament holding the spoke to the umbrella
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If you calculate the azimuth of the before/after pictures, you'd see getting everything fixed took 12 hours! 8am-8pm
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The shaft of the 9 foot umbrella broke so I fixed it with aggressive polyurethane glue. Clamped and set overnight
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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?
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If something doesn't work right, whack it with a Hammer ...
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... today an umbrella, tomorrow ....
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Life without an umbrella ...
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... life with an umbrella!
Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 January 2012 05:49