Helinox Chair One Foot Base

When using the Helinox Chair One in soft sand, some kind of foot base is required to stop the legs sinking.  Helinox make a few different products for this purpose, but they are ridiculously expensive for what they are, so I decided to make my own design which is shown below.

The  design consists of 4 x 50 mm lengths of 30mm diameter flexible cable conduit with tight fitting holes burnt into each to suit the pre-existing tapered feet.  As the original feet are tapered, the hole in the conduit must be slightly smaller then the widest point of the taper or they would just fall off.  Further more in order to fit over the tapered feet the material needs to have a small amount of stretch.



I found that by using a soldering iron to burn a hole in the conduit, the plastic would bunch up as it melted, creating a thicker sidewall around the hole, giving it extra strength and preventing tearing when fitted over the tapered foot.

When not being used on soft sand I remove each of the foot bases from the tapered feet and slide them longitudinally along their respective leg.  A small piece of closed cell foam glued to the inside of each foot base makes a friction fit against the tapered foot stopping them from falling off, but still allowing them to be removed or inserted with slight pressure.  The foot base remains in this position when the chair is folded away allowing the whole assembly to fit easily into the carry case.