hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2345.txt

Episode: 2345
Title: HPR2345: Fixing a toilet roll holder
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2345/hpr2345.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:31:27

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This is HPR episode 2,345 entitled Fixing a Toilet Roll Tolder.
It is posted by Ken Fallon and is about 9 minutes long and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is a small fix improves someone's life.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
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Hi everybody my name is Ken Fallon and you are listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I wanted to do a very short show that may be appropriate for my amazing life hacks.
I think not. It is an amazing life hack but it doesn't belong in that series which includes my patience pending not in the earbud and my angle bracket to increase the size of an ironing board.
Height of an ironing board are in fact tongue and cheek shows lower the bar to entry here when the quality of the shows increases so much that it's time to add a little show there.
So that people realize that you don't have to be a genius to submit a quick show.
So this one is probably going to fit into the repurpose type hacking where you have a little hack and you hack something to make it better.
But it might also fit into a larger series that my wife and I have been working on for the last two years specifically started off directly as a result of wanting to do a show here on HPR.
So we had a little problem here in the house. One of our family members from time to time would get really annoyed in the toilet and would rip up the toilet roll and throw it around the toilet and this happened in the upstairs and downstairs toilet from time to time.
And of course as a parent you get angry wondering why they're doing that and they can't tell you when they get angry and it's a bit of a spiral that occurs.
But then if you don't do that and if you kind of ignore the behavior for a start and don't get annoyed with people then they don't get annoyed.
But after a while after some time had passed when the last incident occurred I asked this person you know what was going on and they didn't really want to talk about it.
So I will talk about it as if this is an engineering problem can fix it.
If there's something wrong with trying to get explained to that person it was okay to be annoyed with something.
But sometimes you don't actually know why you're so we identified the issue really and the issue stems directly from the fact that we don't have a car.
Surprisingly enough if you have a car and you buy toilet rolls you just lift their large and bulky so you put them into the boot or the trunk of your car and you bring them home.
And the circle diameter inside has no integral instability as in the piece of cardboard that forms the core of the toilet roll remains the same concentric shape.
However if you're doing a shopping with a bicycle which we do we have my wife and I my wife usually does the shoppers but sometimes we'll do the shopping together and you put stuff on one saddle bag on the other side.
But the toilet rolls are large and bulky so what do you do you put them on the back use one of the spider holder strap them on.
But as you're cycling home obviously toilet rolls in the center get squashed under the tension of the elastic.
So when you then go to use that put them in the toilet the toilet roll holder that we have jams on that piece.
You imagine taking a toilet roll and squashing it together now instead of having a circle you have two ellipses that are meet in a point.
So as you pull the toilet roll towards you get stuck.
We were using a toilet downstairs that had a different toilet roll holder.
I just realized now as I talk about this and the diameter inside diameter of that toilet roll holder was a lot bigger.
This problem burns only when we switched to a toilet roll holder.
It had a little bar on the inside size maybe of a pencil.
That this became an issue but you pulled it then a pencil bar or a pencil called a toilet roll center which is approximately 25 centimeters.
No, 25, 2.5 centimeters, 25 millimeters, yeah.
Got caught in there and then the toilet roll as you're trying to pull it.
Only one leaf, one page rather than you know whatever that's many as you need it however you choose to go to the toilet to you.
But then this goes from being an issue with the child to being an engineering issue and folks if it's an engineering issue we can solve it.
So what I then did was I was discussing engineering solutions with this person and the first thing we tried was wrapping some toilet roll around the inside core to make the core big.
That kind of worked for a little bit but toilet paper itself got wrapped a cardboard kind of cardboard.
So that was so naturally your mind would go to 3D printing something and we came up with some designs that would need to be a taper holder on the outside and a small diameter.
But this leads us to a problem because the toilet roll holder has a little angle at a tiny lot of centimeters.
To stop the toilet roll from falling off so then you would need printing to print a gap to allow that either larger to that in the plug.
And we were thinking well if it's got two tapers on either side then we would want to stop it from natural force with push stops out.
So then you would need to spring these two plugs for one to better work kept in and in order for to get the roll on and the first thing you need to make a groove and then you need to make a plug that could go back into the groove.
That this thing will work. So it wasn't an actual ideal solution.
So I do what I normally did a few minutes to spare when I was dropping off some recycling.
And I nipped into the local DIY shop and being cute but had a walk around all the aisle picked up some red stoppers for covering over sewerage pipes with water.
They're like plastic red and thin caps.
You know if you're taking away a sink and you just don't want to sink for if you put this a plastic red cap over a 40 mil pipe.
I think well I could put a hole into the heat sink a hole in they would work because I'd be able to maneuver that and put on the end one put on the toilet roll maneuver the other one bend toilet roll pipe.
But then I actually put that back and I was walking around and I came across a piece eventually insulation for insulating water pipe.
And the idea of these thing you put it over the water pipe water is basically performed.
Think of those noodles that you have and swimming pools but with a hole in it obviously smaller diameter.
So this thing has a really small inside diameter about the pencil and an outside diameter about the size of a toilet holder slightly.
So that cost me a massive 1 euro 25 cents and I brought it home causes scissors and because it's flexible and expandable I was able to maneuver around the toilet roll holder angle.
To basically reveal you know to just sit on there and make it a larger diameter.
And then I put the toilet roll back and yeah it's still it's still if it's really squashed you know I'm going going going because you're pulling it but you can still pull the toilet roll.
Now since then the person that I did has not had any they basically eliminated the problem.
I don't know if we eliminate the problem because this is an amazing life hack which it actually is pretty amazing how something so cheap stop.
So I'm not sure whether it's that the engine or whether it's that this person must have an issue and somebody else was taking their issue seriously trying to do that.
And now that solves but either way it doesn't actually matter the solution is there and that's pretty an amazing little life hack.
Now if you have any but this does bring up the whole issue that I've mentioned before here about 3D printing is to the old alley to to he who has he or she indeed who has a hammer the whole world appears as a nail.
And I think we can extend the same the same analogy to 3D printer to to to she who has a 3D printer the old world is a is a cat file.
So sometimes the solutions to your problem is repurposing something else which is actually a good idea anyway of you some ideas.
So if you have ideas for shows of things where you are in the I don't know recycling center goodwill shop or whatever or you happen to be down and what's the laws are being cure or whatever and come across a neat little trick that may not be elegant or maybe elegant.
I'd love to hear about them I really would so tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio.
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