Today, I “mobilized” our two GlowPear planter boxes with a Maker Pipe support frame using the caster kit.
For those who know about them, the GlowPear are big, double-walled plastic planter boxes with an internal water reservoir. This makes them somewhat self-watering, as it allows the soil to draw moisture as needed from a lower section that you keep full. However, all of that water makes them VERY heavy, and while assembling our Maker Pipe canopy, we found that they were in the way.
Any other box might have allowed me to simply attach casters with screws, but you definitely don’t want to puncture the plastic walls of these containers. You also need unrestricted access to the overflow trays on the sides. Anyway, making a simple roller frame seemed like an easy choice.
The frame is designed to be as simple as possible using as few parts as possible. I went with a single horizontal pipe at 20”, four legs that nest under the overhang at 10.5” and pipes from front to back at 12.875”. They are held together using just four Maker Pipe components: 2 90s and two T connectors. Pipes are wrapped in black heat shrink.
Now, the heavy containers are easy to move around the deck. As a bonus, the horizontal pipe which I oriented to the back of the containers is accessible for tying off the Maker Pipe deck canopy to give it some weight in case of high winds. I can also attach a T-connector for future shade or netting over the containers.
Thanks, Maker Pipe!
For those who know about them, the GlowPear are big, double-walled plastic planter boxes with an internal water reservoir. This makes them somewhat self-watering, as it allows the soil to draw moisture as needed from a lower section that you keep full. However, all of that water makes them VERY heavy, and while assembling our Maker Pipe canopy, we found that they were in the way.
Any other box might have allowed me to simply attach casters with screws, but you definitely don’t want to puncture the plastic walls of these containers. You also need unrestricted access to the overflow trays on the sides. Anyway, making a simple roller frame seemed like an easy choice.
The frame is designed to be as simple as possible using as few parts as possible. I went with a single horizontal pipe at 20”, four legs that nest under the overhang at 10.5” and pipes from front to back at 12.875”. They are held together using just four Maker Pipe components: 2 90s and two T connectors. Pipes are wrapped in black heat shrink.
Now, the heavy containers are easy to move around the deck. As a bonus, the horizontal pipe which I oriented to the back of the containers is accessible for tying off the Maker Pipe deck canopy to give it some weight in case of high winds. I can also attach a T-connector for future shade or netting over the containers.
Thanks, Maker Pipe!
As described on the product page, you can get some attractive ends just by leaving some extra heat shrink and inverting it into the open end. You need to do that while it is still warm and soft. For my application, I also wanted to prevent water from going in, so I added an end cap. They are a tight fit, but even with overlapping heat shrink inverted you can tap them in if the heat shrink is still warm and soft. If you wait, it hardens and becomes too tight to tap in the end cap, which is easy to fix—just heat it up again and tap in the end cap.
In any case, I know the tubing ships flat and folded, and that does not lend itself to pulling over long pipes. I recently put a VERY long piece—like three or four feet long—over a pipe with two bends that is the arm to a bird feeder stand. This was not a simple task!
There was no innovation I used to get it done—just squeezing the heat shrink edges together to make it “round”, or at least try to counter-act the squeeze. I noticed sometimes the heat shrink is stuck to itself on the inside and squeezing it into a round cross section at intervals along its length pops it open and “unsticks” the internal surfaces. That does help, and it is hard to do once you realize it is fighting you. It is a little easier to do it BEFORE slipping it over the end of a pipe.
I would think someone here at Maker Pipe has a better answer than mine, as I see all kinds of colored projects that they have done. I am betting it is not the most enjoyable task when setting up a demo, but maybe there are a few tricks. One thing I did not try but might work is to use a little talc, or corn starch. I dunno if this is a good idea or not, but it works to help latex gloves slide over fingertips easily and it provides a bit of lubricant—like microscopic ball-bearings to “roll” between the surfaces. It makes things a little dusty, but this can be cleaned, and a little goes a long way. Just a thought.