How to make a Clothesline Pole?

Gerben

As an alternative if you have a house with multiple storeys and two windows on a straight wall, you can screw an eye into the widowframe below each window and (from a ladder) connect a rope back and forth, so you can hang your clothes to dry from the window (too high for people who want to steal your underwear). Or hang it from the window to the 12 ft. pole you wanted.

Cashmere · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 27, 2008 Posts: 1066

But don't hang a clothesline outside of a window if you have children or clumsy people who will use it. Seriously.

GoghGoner · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 10, 2008 Posts: 185

I have a line going from my window frame (I got small, sturdy hooks from the hardware store) to a fence post. One side is about six feet high and the other side is about 5 feet high. There is a small bow in the line so it's about 4 feet high in the middle. The line is coated plastic.

BigTex

Everyone is missing the incredibly obvious here.

Find one of the neighborhoods that were built in the late 1940s through the 1950s in your town or city. Most of these homes had clothesline poles in the back yard. Drive up and down the alleys in these neighborhoods until you see a pair of poles in a back yard that do not look to be in too bad a shape, but that are not currently being used.

Go to the front door and ask if they would be willing to sell you the poles for, say $50 (or less), if you dug them out and did not leave a hole behind.

When you have dug them out you will see exactly how deep they were originally sunk.

When you get them home, you can knock all of the concrete off, sand, primer and paint them if you would like, and set them in your yard and you will be good to go.

There are probably millions of clothesline poles across America that have not been used in decades.
_________________
Our window of opportunity is slowly closing...at the same time, it probably requires a spiral of adversity. In other words, things have to get worse before they can get better.
-M. King Hubbert, 1983

Ang · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 31, 2007 Posts: 74

Well, now I don't feel like such a dumbass for waiting 20 years to start drying clothes on a line instead of wasting electricity with a dryer. Rocc tied a rope between two trees and that worked so well, I threw two T-posts into the ground right next to them and strung up a second line. The only advice I can give is to buy good clothes pins. Mine came from the dollar store and keep flying apart. The area we live in is pretty windy and now it's warming up so that by the time I get the last of the laundry up, it's time to start taking it down. It's a flippin' joke. How much energy would this country save if we all went back to line drying, do you suppose??

Amazon's on jet packs made me laugh 'til I cried...and I think the super high lines aren't for hanging clothes. They are for pinata's.

SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 812

PhebaAndThePilgrim

Good day from Pheba, from the farm:
I took some photos of our clothes poles, but could not figure out how to do the loading.
Clothes poles I can figure out, computers are a different story.
Our poles are about 9 feet tall. They are old porch beams that came from a construction site my husband was working on about 25 years ago. They are great. They are about 6 by 6.
The poles are not 12 feet long. They should be so 3 feet could be buried. Somehow my husband attached the poles to treated lumber, and buried the treated lumber 3 feet in the ground.
There are 3 lines, about 22 inches apart on the metal crossbar mounted on the pole. My husband used metal eye bolts, and metal cable for the line. I measured the crossbar at about 80 inches, and the center of the line at about 70 inches off the ground, sag.
The line should not be much taller because it strains my shoulders sometimes with heavy stuff.
But, with heavy stuff the line sags more and denim jeans really make it sag.
I remember when I was growing up, everybody had clothesline, and everybody had a long pole, about 2-3 inches in diameter.
The pole was about 6 to 10 inches taller than the clothesline.
One end of the pole was notched to slip into the clothesline.
When the line had heavy laundry on it, just slip the notched end of the pole into the clothesline at the center of the line to take out the slack, and stop the sagging. Works great, is portable, changeable,
and better than having a line strung too tall.
I am 5,10", and I almost find my line too tall.
Hope this helps, and if somebody would care to inform me, I would be happy to download photos.
They are in my HP Image Zone, but I do not know how to get them to this post.
I am back out in the yard. Pheba.
PS. One downside of hanging out laundry. Hubby raises blackberries, many gallons per summer. The birds rob some of the berries, and always, always manage to go potty on my nicest item of clothing I have hung outside, thus ruining it forever. I tend to hang indoors, more than out.
Almost never use the dryer.

max_in_wa

Gonna have to work on that google-fu grasshopper. Wink

Here are some ready made ones.

Fiddlerdave · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 241

Keith_McClary

Keith_McClary

Keith_McClary

Ferretlover

What about a utility light pole that used to be available from the power company? They used to offer them with a security light; maybe a farmer would know-I have seen such lightpoles at farms.
_________________
"RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto