Bike Storage Question

[elapid]

I recently moved and am looking for some bike storage options. I am favouring a ceiling mount system in the garage, such as the Saris Cycle Glide (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=npOzOIWTHAo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnpOzOIWTHAo), but my garage ceiling is too high to easily use this system. I can either mount this on to a frame or on to a pulley system, but just wondering if anyone has other ideas to mount at least 4 bikes easily in a garage with a high ceiling?

 

[laziali]

I recently moved and am looking for some bike storage options. I am favouring a ceiling mount system in the garage, such as the Saris Cycle Glide (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=npOzOIWTHAo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnpOzOIWTHAo), but my garage ceiling is too high to easily use this system. I can either mount this on to a frame or on to a pulley system, but just wondering if anyone has other ideas to mount at least 4 bikes easily in a garage with a high ceiling?

I have thought about this quite a lot although didn't need to do it in the end. I landed on a very simple and cheap design to hang them vertically from the front wheel as follows - all items sourced from hardware and marine shop at minimal cost:

PARTS
2 x pulleys
2 x anchors to hold pulleys
rope
plastic-coated open hook to hold front rim
marine cleat or other rope tie-off

STEPS
- Install first anchor and pulley to roof truss.
- Install second anchor and pulley to wall (so you can get a nice vertical pull down the wall and keep the rope out of the way).
- Thread rope through both pulleys (ie upside down U shape) with open plastic-coated hook at one end of the rope
- Install marine cleat or other tie-off to wall.
- To use, simply hook the end of the rope onto rim, hoist up via pulley, cleat-off the rope.

The only downside I could think of was it may swing around in the air a bit when hoisting which might bump into other stored bikes.

For an horizontal hang, you would just need a Y-junction on the main rope with two short pieces from it to hold the hooks - one hook for each rim (or for seat and bars if you want to hang right side up).

Let us know if you go with this - would like to see how it pans out.

 

[King Boonen]

A quick suggestion in terms of anti-theft. The best thing you can do other than a secure locking system is remove the wheels and store them elsewhere. It can be a bit of a faff, but a lot of bike theft, even from homes and garages is opportunistic and being confronted with just a frame puts many off.

 

[Benotti69]

Mounting your bikes on a high ceiling sounds like an excellent method to prevent theft. Are your bikes heavy? A good ladder to get a bike should be ok, no?

 

[Aapjes]

A thief can use a ladder too. If you can fairly easily get at the bike to take a ride, a thief can get at it too.

 

[Benotti69]

A thief can use a ladder too. If you can fairly easily get at the bike to take a ride, a thief can get at it too.

If the ladder is not kept int he same places as the bikes they cant, unless they bring a ladder. It also easier to lock 1 ladder than 4 bikes

 

[elapid]

Knock on wood, but I've accidently left my garage door open for hours, even overnight, with 8 bikes hanging up on the wall with nothing stolen. First step is to not leave the garage door open )). In regards to the storage options, anti-theft measures are not my first priority, although it is obviously an important consideration. My first priority is an efficient storage system which maximizes the available space in my garage, but which is also easy to access and store.

My heaviest bike is a dual-suspension MTB (probably 25lb) and all my other bikes are single speed commuters and various incarnations of road bikes (road, 'cross, tourer).

@ Laziali - thanks for your idea. I might give this a go. At the worst, if it doesn't work, I can use all the listed equipment as a hoist for the Saris Cycle Glide.

I will not be able to tackle this project for a couple of weeks, but will post pics when finished.

 

[hiero2]

I had a friend who went to the hardware store, bought the same parts, pretty much, as laziali, and built something like this quite easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UR-uFL0Cg

 

[avanti]

I had a friend who went to the hardware store, bought the same parts, pretty much, as laziali, and built something like this quite easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UR-uFL0Cg

One of the guys in my bike club has a similar hoist in his garage.

Myself I've thought of building a deck above the hoods (bonnets) of my cars.

 

[dsut4392]

Check ebay before you DIY- I was after a similar system for hoisting kayaks, and found I could purchase a complete hoist kit for far less than it would cost to get the parts from the hardware store.

A couple of examples from a 60 second search:

How about a complete kit for 4 bikes for $40 including postage?

Or for the lazy, a motorized kit with 125lb lift capacity for $167?

The ones I bought are very similar to the cheap option above, but with a thicker cord to give a higher weight rating. They work fine to lift our 5.3m, 30kg sea kayaks (I have made cradles for the kayaks rather than using the supplied hooks, but the hooks would have worked fine for bikes).

One small tip, if you're going to hang your bike from the wheels, remember to empty your bidons first [some suspension forks also leak damping fluid if stored upside down]

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

A bike will hang quite nicely suspended by the nose of its saddle resting atop a horizontal bar, like the clothes bar in a wardrobe, no Rube Goldberg device required. I have just such a round wooden bar spanning a narrow hallway where I keep my "regular use" bikes. If you are reasonably fit and have normal range of motion in both shoulders, you should have no difficulty raising a 15 kilo bicycle above head high to hang its nose over just such a bar. I'm a seven stone weakling with two bad shoulders and I hang a 15 kilo MTB with the wheels 1.7 meters off the floor with ease. They do hang slightly front wheel low but still will hang securely with either or both wheels removed.

Since I had two facing walls relatively close together, I only needed a board with a v-notch 'cradle' cut in it and nailed to either wall to serve as mounts for my wooden bar. That will do for one end of your setup but for the other, but you will need to attach a 19x38m batten to a rafter in your garage ceiling. Toenailing or diagonal wood screws would be the cheapest way to fasten it (drilled pilot holes will help), but you can use fancier attaching hardware if it helps you sleep nights. With the free end hanging to about 2 cm below the height above the floor where you want the bar to hang, drill a horizontal hole through the broader sides at the "bar height" and of the same or a larger diameter as your wooden bar. Nail the piece of scap board to the wall with the v-notch facing upwards and positioned at the same height above the floor as the hole in the batten. Add a wooden bar (mine is 2.5 cm) long enough to rest in the v-notch on the wall and extend through the hole in the batten and Bob's your uncle.

All it costs is one short batten, one suitably long wooden bar, a few nails and a bit of scrap board. With a couple of rudimentary tools, like a tape measure, a hammer, a saw and a drill with a hole boring bit, you could make it in 15 minutes.

If you are particular about a bike not leaving its assigned position, drive a small finishing nail into the top of the wooden bar and on either side of where you want a bike's nose located. Then mark that spot with a sharpie or bit of tape on the bar so it can be located from below.

 

[hiero2]

A bike will hang quite nicely "TL - didn't quote!".

It may be how you are defining batten - but I simply can not draw a mental picture of what you are doing. Any chance for a photo or two?

 

[avanti]

A bike will hang quite nicely suspended by the nose of its saddle resting atop a horizontal bar, like the clothes bar in a wardrobe, no Rube Goldberg device required. ...............

Similar to bike hangers at track meets or outside some coffee shops

Update: in cleaning out my garage today I relized I can install a horrizontal bar between my stairs and the wall. Thanks StyrbornSterki for the idea.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

It may be how you are defining batten - but I simply can not draw a mental picture of what you are doing. Any chance for a photo or two?

Batten is the proper name for what in some parts of the world colloquially is called "a board." In the USA, a 19x38 batten is called a two-by-four. As in inches. Here's a quick-n-dirty sketch:



My perspective is wonky because I showed the wall viewed head-on but a quartering view of the batten/board. The batten in this case simply is a substitute for a conveniently closely located second wall.

Probably should have done the sketch to start, eh wot. A picture is worth a lot more words than I wrote.

...Update: in cleaning out my garage today I relized I can install a horrizontal bar between my stairs and the wall. Thanks StyrbornSterki for the idea.

Cheers, mate. Glad I could be of help.

 

[Chivers]

http://www.ikeahackers.net/2010/06/broder-bike-hack.html

seen a few types of bike storage on ikea hackers - worth a look

 

[elapid]

Thanks for all your help and input. As an interim, I have hung my bikes on the wall of the garage. This will probably not work because it is difficult to get in and out of the car while it is in the garage, which will be even more difficult getting kids in and out of the car as well.

So below is my rough idea. Any comments, particularly with the pulley system, would be much appreciated. I will have 5-7 bikes, so approximate weight will be around 150lb.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Excuse me stating the obvious but with that much weight, you should be sure your pulleys are affixed to the joists behind the ceiling fascia so that the fascia itself does not bear all the weight.

I think 150# with no mechanical advantage and just a skinny rope would be a bit dodgy. Even the single bike hoists sold commercially generally are rigged with pulleys that create a 2:1 MA. I have never used one but I always have had my doubts as to their ability to lift the load in a level fashion, but with that much weight, I see few other choices.

Wikipedia has an article detailing the mechanical advantages of different block and tackle designs.

Or you could forget the B&T, use just single pulleys mounted to the ceiling, and wind up your rope with a winch mounted to the wall. This one goes for $18 on Amazon:

It's a 600# winch, and the reduction gearing has an MA of 3:1, which is compounded by the winding drum having a smaller radius than the cranking handle. They don't state the final MA (probably because it varies according to how much rope or cable is on the spool) but I can't image it's less than 20:1. In which case you're looking at <10# effort to raise 150# of bikes, even factoring in drag.

Obviously the winch would have to be mounted sideways against a wall to give you room to swing the crank, so it would take a bit of jury-rigging, perhaps a sort of heavy-duty sconce attached to a wall stud.

Here's my idea, quick and dirty:



In the side view, I've used an extra pulley than your design to keep the rope(s) running closer to the ceiling and wall. YMMV.

The most unsettled part is what to do with four individual ropes. The mechanically simplest solution is to run all four all the way to the winch. Provided your rope isn't too thick, its drum should be plenty big enough to handle winding three meters or so all four. The only adjustment would be the corner pulley -- if you use one -- would have to be considerably larger than the four pulleys mounted to the ceiling above the lifting rack need be.

If you don't run four individual ropes all the way to the winch, that means they have to join somewhere, and knots and pulleys just don't get along. I have a sailing background and rarely pass on an opportunity to show off my splicing skills. If you've not tried it before, these guys have excellent instructions online. Select your rope type and look for an end-to-end splice. You'll still need to adjust the size of any pulley the splice might have to pass through, but splices are far more likely to run trouble-free than knots.

 

[dsut4392]

I think 150# with no mechanical advantage and just a skinny rope would be a bit dodgy. Even the single bike hoists sold commercially generally are rigged with pulleys that create a 2:1 MA. I have never used one but I always have had my doubts as to their ability to lift the load in a level fashion, but with that much weight, I see few other choices.

Agree - you absolutely need some mechanical advantage, even for one or two bikes it wouldn't hurt.
I also agree having an additional pulley at the ceiling/wall junction is required if what you're lifting is longer than the spacing between your pulleys (i.e. the pulleys on the ceiling would need to be spaced further apart than the total length of your bikes or your lifting frame, otherwise the haul rope will interfere)

Level lifting isn't a big issue with the cheapo commercial system I use, and IMO greater weight actually works in favour of overcoming differences in friction between the pulleys at each end (since the friction component is proportionally a smaller contributor to the overall lifting work). One boat is a bit tail-heavy so that end lifts slower, but as soon as the pulley at the nose end reaches the ceiling, the tail end comes up. I am however only lifting one kayak at a time, the OP's proposed design would have serious issues with uneven loading side to side.

Or you could forget the B&T, use just single pulleys mounted to the ceiling, and wind up your rope with a winch mounted to the wall.
Here's my idea, quick and dirty:



In the side view, I've used an extra pulley than your design to keep the rope(s) running closer to the ceiling and wall. YMMV.

The most unsettled part is what to do with four individual ropes. <snip>

I want to like your proposed solution because you've explained everything so well, but I think in reality it's over-engineered and will suffer from usability issues. I forget how high the OP said his ceiling is, but say the total lift required is 2m. Estimating the circumference of the winch drum at 6cm, with a mechanical advantage of 3x that gives 2cm lift per crank revolution. That gives a total of 100 cranks of the handle to go up, and 100 cranks to come down. Sounds tedious to me, even if you drop the mechanical advantage by eliminating the gear drive or increasing the size of the winch drum.

I don't think passing knots or splices through pulleys would necessarily be required, but the pulleys at each corner would need to be on swivels as the direction of the load would change significantly.

Elapid, how often do you want to get down all the bikes at once? Unless the answer to that is "most of the time", I think you'll be better off hoisting each bike separately.
Pros:
- only lift the bike you want, instead of lifting all the bikes every time. A true cyclist has no use for bigger heavier arms
- lower mechanical advantage required = faster lifting/lowering
- no headaches trying to keep the load level
- load distributed across your ceiling instead of concentrated at one point
- lower load & complexity = reduced risk (and consequences) of failure (at worst you only drop one bike)
- you can can buy kits really cheaply on ebay (although mine didn't include the pulley to go in the corner between the ceiling at wall)

Cons:
- Maybe slower on those times you do want multiple bikes (except you can reduce the mechanical advantage to lift more with each pull)
- Won't be able to pack the bikes quite as close together (but you could easily stagger them end to end, or at the four corners of your garage as the lifting systems will be completely independent). Getting the middle bike in your diagram out would be a nuisance anyway.
- More individual parts required to purchase (but you can use cheaper parts, such as the kits linked in my previous post)
- More individual parts to install (but no construction of a frame required)

Final word of advice: when drilling or screwing, particularly overhead, ALWAYS WEAR SAFETY GLASSES. I got a small metal shaving stuck in my eyeball when fixing my system to the ceiling, carved off a galvanised bracket by a screw head. Luckily one of my riding buddies is an eye surgeon, who opened up his rooms on a Sunday morning to get it out for me (thanks Andy).

 

[elapid]

Thanks - I knew there would be issues with the weight and pulley system. Great ideas. I'll look at both of your suggestions in more detail when I get some time later, but just a quick answer to one of your questions: the intention for this is winter storage. In the cycling months, we do not park our car in the garage and so have ready access to our bikes. In winter, there is not much space to park in the garage and open the car doors with the bikes mounted on the wall. So I wanted to store the bikes out of the way during winter.

 

[dsut4392]

Thanks - I knew there would be issues with the weight and pulley system. Great ideas. I'll look at both of your suggestions in more detail when I get some time later, but just a quick answer to one of your questions: the intention for this is winter storage. In the cycling months, we do not park our car in the garage and so have ready access to our bikes. In winter, there is not much space to park in the garage and open the car doors with the bikes mounted on the wall. So I wanted to store the bikes out of the way during winter.

Much as I would like to have a real winter with enough snow to ski, I am glad we have 12 "cycling months" in each year! My condolences for your impending months of cold and gloom

If you are just talking about winter storage, why not just mount hooks straight to the ceiling? Instead of futzing about with pulleys and frames, save your money to buy a long ladder instead, which you can put to use for cleaning gutters, painting, changing that lightglobe up under the eaves etc...

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

...I want to like your proposed solution because you've explained everything so well, but I think in reality it's over-engineered and will suffer from usability issues. I forget how high the OP said his ceiling is, but say the total lift required is 2m. Estimating the circumference of the winch drum at 6cm, with a mechanical advantage of 3x that gives 2cm lift per crank revolution. That gives a total of 100 cranks of the handle to go up, and 100 cranks to come down. Sounds tedious to me, even if you drop the mechanical advantage by eliminating the gear drive or increasing the size of the winch drum.....

Can't argue. It's killing ants with a 10-kilo sledgehammer. I just happened to be familiar with that style of winch because they're used extensively on boat trailers. And they're robust, inexpensive, and widely available. If elapid can find an alternative with an MA better suited to the task, more power to him. I just don't happen to know what sort of endeavour might be using them, or where to find them. Maybe a window-shopping trip to a sailboat outfitter's shop is in order. The up side is that the MA is so high, Mama or even the kids could run it.

...I don't think passing knots or splices through pulleys would necessarily be required, but the pulleys at each corner would need to be on swivels as the direction of the load would change significantly....

If the joining of the four ropes is never to contact the single pulley in the corner, the lifting rack must be mounted further away from the wall than elapid intends lifting his bikes. That was not a limitation I imposed on my design because doing so would increase the likelihood of car/bike conflicts. The spliced ropes, or running all four of them all the way to the winch, gives him the option to mount the lifting rack nearer the wall, possibly allowing it to be raised or lowered even while the cars are parked there.

Regarding the swivels, in an earlier version of my post with the winch drawings, I made mentioned that the pulleys should be mounted on eye bolts so they could realign themselves according to the stresses on the ropes. Somehow that bit got deleted before I posted.

 

[elapid]

So I looked into homemade storage options, fancy commercial options, and basic commercial options. The basic commercial options had good reviews and was at least as affordable as homemade storage options. So this is what I ended up doing:

I lag bolted four 2" x 8" lumbar cross beams to the joists in the ceiling of the garage. Three bikes were hoisted on to one pair of cross beams and two bikes were hoisted on to the other pair of cross beams. The two pairs of cross beams were offset from each other by 20cm to more evenly distribute the weight of the bikes and to avoid potentially overloading a single pair of cross beams with five bikes. The spacing between bikes was 50cm and the bikes were alternated from front-to-back and back-to-front which, combined with the offset between the pairs of cross beams, allowed sufficient room for each bikes without clashing of handlebars or pedals. With the commercial pulley system, lumbar, and lag bolts, it cost me just under $300. Well timed too ... we're expecting 20-25cm of snow over the next 24hrs!

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Good for you, elapid. Looks an excellent solution. I especially like the two bikes stored in the vertical "ready rack." A small detail that makes living with the bikes tied to the ceiling less frustrating.