My dryer just died, and since I’m moving in a few months, I really don’t want to buy a new one I’ll only have to move. I would like to put up a standing clothes dryer in the back yard (not a clothesline, more like the umbrella type.) My question is, does it actually WORK to pour cement into a bucket and use that as a base? It’s a rental property, so I don’t want to pour it into a hole in the ground! I’ve heardthat you can use the bucket option, but does anyone know how well that actually works? Has anybody tried this?
I think it would be easier, and cheaper, to make a base out of wood. Just make it broad enough to avoid tipping. You can always take it apart and take it w/ you.
Get a 3 or 4 foot piece of pipe that has an internal diameter large enough to slip over the upright of the clothes umbrella.
Drive that pipe about half to two thirds into the ground, slip your clothes umbrella into that.
A five gallon bucket might be heavy enough to resist the wind load on your clothes and remain standing. I’d still add the pipe to the bucket so you could take the clothes umbrella down without having to move the bucket.
CMC fnord!
A few years ago, I took a large plastic flowerpot - probably about a ten or fifteen-gallon capacity - and filled it with concrete, with a 4-foot section of pipe sticking out.
This held my satellite dish perfectly well as the apartment building was not allowing residents to bolt antennas to the building, but they could not forbid antennas outright.
This may or may not be enough to support a clothes dryer, just because those things are a lot taller than the dish was, and wet laundry probably weighs more than a small satellite antenna. If you can stand this on pavement, it may be fine, but I wouldn’t want to trust it out in the middle of a lawn, not knowing how smooth the ground is, or if one side will decide to pack down a bit and let the thing tip over, dropping your clothes.
ETA: forgot to say, that if anyone wants to replicate this for mounting their satellite antenna without attaching it to a building, the pipe was used for chain-link fencing. Recall it was 1 5/8" diameter.
I think you’d need the combination of a wide base plus a heavy base. The bucket of concrete satisfies the weight demand but I think it will still tip over. Maybe if you could attach the concrete bucket to a wooden X of some sort it will be less apt to tip over.