Awning Arm Wire Rope Clothes Line

Some smart cookie with some serious common sense came up with the very cool idea of stringing stainless steel wire rope between awning arms, to create a permanently deployed clothes line.   We have followed suit and have found it pretty damned handy.   We’ve also added a personal touch to make it a little better for us.

These clothes lines are available commercially, but they are incredibly cheap and easy to make from scratch, particularly if you want 2 of them.

Probably the only key point to remember whether you buy a kit and make it up yourself, is not to over tighten the turnbuckles.   You’ll only do this once, because whilst the awning will seemingly roll out per usual it simply will refuse to roll back in again until you back off the turnbuckles.

The materials required to create the clothes line are available from Bunnings (and other hardware outlets) for a total of around $20.   The 3.2mm stainless steel wire rope is around $1.50 per meter and a stainless steel hook and eye turnbuckle kit around $6.50, and a small packet of stainless steel 4mm nut and bolts.

We chose to bolt the strap eyelets to the awning arm with stainless steel bolts around 100mm from the awning barrel.   Blind rivets would be an alternative to the bolts.   The inner awning arm is well below the top area of the outer arm so the inner arm wont impact the fixing nuts, but with poptop vans it may require checking and some consideration.   I mounted the eyelets slightly closer to the outer edge of the awning arm because the clothesline pressure on the the awning arm closer to that corner is less prone to flex there and also the sliding horizontal awning strut will further clear the fixing nuts inside the awning arm

I mistakenly chose to gas weld rather than crimp the eyelets to the end of the wire rope.   Ive replaced the wire rope with crimped ends but my mistake posted here should help with what not to do

The tension on the wire rope has to maintain enough slack to enable the awning to open and close freely, something I didn’t initially consider.   The slack and sag is accentuated with a line full of washing.   The slack also allows the wire rope to slap a minor amount in transit, particularly over the longer van lengths.   The transit slap was eliminated by making a hook attached to the mid awning wall support.   The hook is just a 25mm slice of PVC cut from sewer pipe with an angle grinder and heated with a paint stripper gun and bent to the required shape.   The hook is then held in place with a large cable tie.   The hooks long sweeping entry tongue allows the wire to pop out if I forget to flick it out before opening the awning

The line sag is minimised by again 25mm slices of PVC sewer pipe heated and bent to shape, with a piece of keder (spline) tape super glued to the end of the PVC.   The keder/PVC supports (we have 3) are slid into the barrel sail track, spaced and hooked under the clothe line.   Just something we added because we could

A very important consideration with awning arm clothe lines is they make it virtually impossible to properly attached annex walls.   With some mucking about the main annex barrel wall can be inserted, but the clothes line interferes with the proper attachment of the front and rear walls.    Using shackles and a turnbuckle on the clothes line will ease the pain of removing it when an annex is required.