<\/p>\nAt Christmas I bought a cheapie garden arch and had it assembled and in the garden in about half an hour on Christmas day. The Gardman Gothic Arch comes in a long flat box with clear instructions for assembly. But despite following the instructions carefully, on Boxing Day a strong gusty wind shook it apart. But not to dispair – it is just one of life’s challenges – here’s how I solved the problem so sucessfully that I bought another one. <\/p>\n
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Find a flat surface to assemble the sides and follow the instructions to the letter – it is very easy to over-tighten the screws that hold the connectors to the legs, so just tighten until it doesn’t move easily.<\/p>\n
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The side rails just push into the plastic connectors – so here is where I make an improvement. Carefully drill a small hole right through the connector and through the side rail, and do the same through the body of the connector and the upright leg, like this:<\/p>\n
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Then cut a short length of thin galvanised wire – the sort you can buy for AUS$2.00 in Clints or Go-Lo – about 80mm, and feed it through the hole and twist it together. This will not pull apart in a wind!<\/p>\n
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The thoughtful manufacturer provided a separate piece of rod to hammer into the ground to make holes for the legs. I quickly found that with Canberra’s heavy clay soil the piece of rod was not up to the task. Here’s a workaraound – take a short piece of galvanised water pipe and an end cap – this will fit neatly over the end of the rod and provide a good striking surface for a heavy mallet or hammer – now you can make holes deep enough for the legs so that the structure will be stable!<\/p>\n
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So now you are all set – here is the completed structure is in the ground ready to grow a climbing rose or star jasmine over it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
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And here’s one I made earlier…<\/p>\n
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Enjoy!<\/p>\n
Cheers
\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Christmas I bought a cheapie garden arch and had it assembled and in the garden in about half an hour on Christmas day. The Gardman Gothic Arch comes in a long flat box with clear instructions for assembly. But despite following the instructions carefully, on Boxing Day a strong gusty wind shook it apart. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diy","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}