At he end of last summer (though TBH could have been the one before) t’ OH spotted a “bargain” parasol in Super U and snapped it it.
Lacking a base it sat (or stood) idle for a while but a base has been acquired and OH thought it would be nice (given the current warm weather) to set it up.
Sadly we were thwarted by a rather limp bottom tube.
Must have been like this when bought, too long ago to take it back though.
Anyone know where to get a replacement? 38mm, 1000mm long - perhaps 1mm wall thickness?
Any attempt to search for a replacement has been thwarted as the house WiFi is going through the 4G connection with a UK SIM and consequently looks like a UK based query and Google steadfastly refuses to search French retailers for a French replacment (even if I phrase the query in French - unfortunately parasol is the same in both languages, as is tube).
I can see UK suppliers of stainless intended for exhaust repairs/customisation, which might work, but wondered if I could get a hold of anything this week.
Google AI helpfully says Leroy Merlin sells replacement parasol bits but not, as far as I can see, anything to replace this bit of tube.
I could try to straighten the bit that we have but suspect it will always have a weak spot.
It /might/ but I’m not sure that it would fit into the top section. At the moment my (very tired, been driving since 4am) brain has realised “tube inférieur pour parasol” is a better search term but it still hasn’t turned up exactly what is needed.
eg this
is quite close but I need 38mm, with probably 1mm or 1.5mm wall thickness and it is just a plain tube with a hole drilled at the top which engages the top half of the parasol.
I’ve got a cantilever type that I broke the winder handle off. I’ll measure it in the morning and if it matches you’re very welcome to it. 50150 about 20 km south of Vire
A local Forgeron might help you out. We had one locally back in Bretagne who used to make spare English sized steel tubing for the scaffolding clips that the French sizes were too small
On a similar note, a freak gust of wind sent our 6m x 3m canopy airborne across the garden damaging 6 of the very thin walled struts. I bought a length of tube and fashioned it into oval with a metal forming machine I brought over to make some gates. Noticed thin walled oval tube used for clothes hanging rails, popped into brico depot and they had 3m x 3m canopies for €59 so bought one and robbed it for spares so we can at short notice or further damage use the part back into a 3m if needed.
I wondered if you would find the tube you wanted at a decheterie as there were a few seen better days ones in ours the other week if the former offer proves unsuccessful?
Not sold in the shops and 6 working day delivery which is no good as we’re heading back Sunday the 12th,
There’s an Amazon listing which says delivery Thurs for €21, delivery included. Then there’s the same Comment Fer item with delivery 11-15th which isn’t really soon enough and that’s <cough> €21 delivery so no thanks.
Then there’s Roi Du Fer who want 12,39 € for the tube (good) but 14,40 € delivery (not so great) and don’t specify how long delivery will take (deal breaker).
Are you near to Vannes? CMB Prolians used to supply OH with IPE’s and other metal products. You might find something there. They are all over Brittany, not sure where you are though
Still might be worth a visit. We used to have to order special sized IPE’s for old Breton buildings which they made up so they might be able to do something around that size from left overs etc
As a ,down an’ dirty fix, could you gently straighten out the bend a bit and shove a bit of wood in it, to strengthen it for now. Might work until you have more time to source the metal tubing you need.
Plan B - if the tube I have on order doesn’t work out - is to see if I can straighten the bent tube, though I am very wary of spending more than the project is worth and I don’t have a suitably sized bit of wood to stuff down it.
Not a pretty solution but this happened to one of our parasols & I’ve splinted it with 50mm o/d waste water pipe (the thick walled version). I drilled through the whole lot & put bolts in.
We have a base that accommodates the bigger diameter.
