Top positive review
89 people found this helpful
LOVE KNOWING THE UMBRELLA IS STABLE IN THE WINDS HERE
By timeforachange on Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2016
There is nothing better than a beautiful sunny day unless of coarse if it is too hot or if the sun is shining right on your face, then you need an umbrella to block it. I had already gotten an umbrella that I absolutely love, it practically covers the whole deck. The only problem I was having was with these Nebraska winds. They are horrible and I was not wanting to screw the base into the deck wood because then if you want to move it you can't... it is too permanent. I never even knew they made these portable bases, but boy is it a life saver. Since it is still really windy here we practiced with filling the 4 plastic bases in the garage and then once it stops being so windy in a few weeks, we will wheel barrow them out to the back deck. My husband is one of those men always thinking about how you would reuse something if you had too. So he decided he would never need sand for anything so he bought bags of small stone river rocks...they are quite heavy and he figured we could use them in the garden since they are decorative if we ever had too. These umbrella bases come with everything you need including instructions and a little plastic funnel to use to fill the bases with. Very easy and super simple. These are the..Abba Patio Plastic Umbrella Base Plate Set for Cantilever Offset Umbrella in Black by Abba Patio® PACKAGING... ---all 4 bases come in a box with the instructions and a plastic funnel. PROS... ---4 triangular base plates with caps ---heavy duty plastic ---very heavy durable ---can be filled with wet or dry sand...or as we did with river rock pebbles ---these base plates add a total weight to the base of your umbrella of between 150 to 180 pounds ---they are UV protected so they won' fade ---each triangle is roughly 27.5 by 14 inches CONS... ---absolutely none yet...but I will update if I find one. I received this product to test for free and I was only asked to give my honest opinion. I did not receive any type of compensation for doing so. All opinions are my own or that of my husband if he helped me to test it.
Top critical review
HARD to fill, need at least 2 people, need to buy your own funnel, get good sand
By David Baker on Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2018
It took me AND one other person (plus yet another to give the second person a break) to fill these four weights with sand and water. It is VERY SLOW going. Plan on at least an hour with two people -- I'm not even sure it's possible with only one person; this does not include the time to go buy the sand and a decent funnel. The funnel they sent me is junk and fell apart about 5 minutes into the operation.) It is possible that a different type of sand would work better -- at minimum make sure it is super-dry and try to get the smallest-grained sand you can find. One reviewer mentioned Quikrete 1962-51 (a medium-grain), so maybe that would work, but my local big-box hardware store did not have it in stock, so I bought sand that was advertised as "good for a child's sand box". I suspect that the Quikrete would have been a better solution because I think it's a finer material; if I were to do it over again, I would try Quikrete 1961, which is there "fine grain". (Note that Quikrete makes many different products, so I suggest you call the store in advance to make sure they have this particular type of Quikrete before you drive over there; my store did not have it, though they had other types of Quikrete.) Note also that these weights *leak* (at least if you use water mixed with sand, as I did). The caps for the fill-holes are snap-on type, rather than threaded, as they should be to minimize leakage. Unless you happen to have an industrial scale handy, it is difficult to figure out exactly how much sand and water to put into each weight. Sand bags typically come in 50 pound bags, so you'll need to figure out just how much of each bag to pour at each step (and you'll need to convert to kilograms because that's what they give in the instructions). Just as an example, imagine you have a 50 pound bag of sand and you need to pour 13.2 pounds of sand out of it (6 kg, per the instructions). We used good old fashioned guessing, but maybe someone has a better solution. Last, the instructions show two "methods" of filling the weights: one with just sand and one with sand and water. There is *no* explanation of the differences between these methods or reasons to choose one over the other. If I had known what I was in for, I would have bought pre-filled weights at a local store. Now that I've got these four things filled up, it's just too much trouble to empty them to return them, so I'll live with what I got. Good luck to you!
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