Easy Reach Plant Pulley: Old Technology for New Products

Very few things make me happier than to see a clever solution to a common problem. That is the very nature of invention and technological progress. The Easy Reach Plant Pulley distributed by Allstar Products Group fits that category.

I first saw the Easy Reach Plant Pulley selling for $9.98 retail as I was walking past an "As Seen on TV" display at a local discount store. My first thought was "Why didn't I think of that?" My second thought was "I'm buying this," if for no other reason than to reward whoever thought of it and brought it to market.

Looking on the back of the package, there's a simple photo of the inside of the product labeled "How it Works." The caption describes a Ratcheting Pulley. First, it's not exactly a pulley. Second, there is nothing in the picture that actually helps the mechanism work. The locking lever has been removed from the photo and the cam locks have been hidden in the photo. Hmmm. OK, they don't want to show their "secret." I bought it anyway.

The Easy Reach Plant Pulley is designed to solve a problem that I experience in my house. We have very high ceilings throughout much of the house. The open beams are ten feet above the floor and the ceiling starts at 12 feet high and goes up to 20 feet. That leaves plenty of room for hanging plants. Unfortunately, though, it is difficult to water them because of the height.

The Easy Reach Plant Pulley allows me to raise and lower the plant easily for watering. There's nothing magic about the Easy Reach Plant Pulley. I can think of a half dozen different ways to accomplish the same result and most people I know could have designed a little winding mechanism like this in under an hour. The clever part is recognizing that the problem needs a solution and then applying one.

Nevertheless, I decided to dissect the Easy Reach Plant Pulley to see how they did it. I admit that I was mostly motivated mostly by the uninformative "How it Works" diagram on the box. The housing is held together by four Philips screws. Once removed, the housing pulls apart with some difficulty because of the tight friction fit between the two halves. By lifting off the back, the winding wheel remains in place in the front half of the housing.

Lifting out the "pulley" wheel, knowing that I was likely releasing a wound spring, which I did, revealed that the wheel had several slots around it's perimeter for the locking lever to drop into and hold the plant at the desired height. The leading edge of the slots was higher than the railing edge which means that if the wheel is spinning too fast, the gravity-powered locking lever cannot fall far enough, fast enough to get below the trailing edge and lock the wheel in place. It's a simple, effective mechanism that could have been designed and built more than two thousand years ago. In principle, it's not all that different from the ratchet system used to open and medieval castle drawbridges.

Having worked in new product development, the two carabiner "Clip Hooks" look like expensive afterthoughts to me. These hooks are designed to effectively eliminate any liability from a falling plant, but they could very easily have been designed as integral parts of the plastic housing and the plastic piece at the lower end of the extension cord. A redesign to eliminate these two metal hook assemblies would most like result in a substantial cost reduction without loss of function or safety.

Once I reassembled the Easy Reach Plant Pulley, rewinding the spring, and replacing the housing screws, it tested it out. It worked exactly as advertised. Allowing me to easily raise and lower a Boston fern and a Christmas cactus effortlessly for watering. The product makes it so easy to care for hanging plants that I will probably end up adding more of them in my house. For anyone who has trouble reaching hanging plants to keep them watered, I highly recommend the Easy Reach Plant Pulley, which I found retailing for $9.98.