Greetings everyone:
I would like to install some overhead steel garage shelves in my garage. I’m talking about the kind that basically uses heavy duty angle iron suspended from overhead joists with a platform for storage. They come in a variety of sizes. One brand that looks pretty good is monster rax at www.monsterrax.com. (also see pdf installation file for illustrations)
All of these racks come with short sections of angle iron to be mounted on the bottom faces of overhead joists with lag screws driven up vertically into the joists. The vertical down angle iron posts are then secured to these four short sections. I am wondering if folks here think the installation would be stronger if would forego the short pieces and instead placed the vertical drop angle iron posts alongside of the joists and then the lags driven in horizontally (like a wall cabinet). It would seem it would be tougher to pull out a lag driven in horizontally rather than rely on the shelf pulling down on a lag driven in vertically. However, because each pair of vertical angle iron drop posts essentially have to placed like mirror images (so ultimately the bottom shelf platform will fit in), one has to use the inside faces of the joists. Now, the problem becomes the distance is no longer 24″ or 48″ OC which is the platform size of the bottom shelf but is rather 24″ or 48″ minus the width of one joist. There might be some play in the vertical posts that they could be spaced more tightly and then spread out a bit towards the bottom but I thought the board might have some other ideas. Or….perhaps folks here will tell me just to drive the lags up vertically into the joists. One other potential problem I can see with my horizontal lag route is that in the unfinished overhead area of my garage where I want to put them, there are 2×4’s (24″ OC) that obviously don’t have much vertical space if I wanted to use TWO horizontal lags into their sides.
Any input would be appreciated.
Edited 4/17/2008 3:30 pm ET by Will92
Replies
You might consider installing unistrut or other channels on the top side of ceiling joists to sandwich your support rather than lagging through the side. You could recess the fastener to create a flat mouning surface or attach directly into the channel with threaded rods. Roger
Thanks folks;
I appreciate these thoughts/comments. Since these are 2x4's, I agree it not advisable to load up the racks too aggressively and would not do so.
I like the idea of unistrut or equivalent on TOP of the joists. In fact, I can get some unistrut of just some more of the angle iron from monster rax and place it over two or more joists. I can lag DOWN into the tops of the joists and that way the whole structure is "pulling" from the tops of the joists - rather than applying force from an upward driven lag on the bottom side of the joists. Does that all make sense?? I could get angle iron long enough to straddle two or more joists so the weight is more uniformly distributed. I like this.
Thanks again. Any other comments?
My concern with those things is whether the ceiling joists were intended to by loaded that much. normally a ceiling joist is sized to hold an even load of sheetrock is all. turn that into a point load of whatever hundreds of pounds you are adding and you are likely to see the difference in a couple months/.
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What Piffin says.
But in my garage, I had 2"angle iron lengths attached to the side walls - after removing the DW first. Lagged them in tite.
Fortunately, this was in a 11' 4" wide extension that lengthened the garage depth, making it overall an "L" shape.
Once the angles were in, I simply went down to the scaffold store and bought two 10' Werner Task Master Al extension planks (the type that can stretch up to almost 20') and stretched them to fit the distance. Then drilled a small hole on both ends thru the angle and plank and dropped a roofing nail in each to hold the plank from possibly moving.
I can load this up with far more than those brackets you mentioned. And it looks far better than those things I've seen in the ads.
Depending on your truss layout, you might be able to run all the way to a top cord at the junction, and hang back down from there.
peteshlagor: I am having a hard time envisioning what you did. I think I get the part about lagging into the side wall but didn't quite get the rest.
The monster rax really does look to be high quality and certainly much better than units I have seen at home depot and lowes made by HyLoft. If I can get them to work, I think they are a good choice. I just don't like lagging up into the bottoms of the overhead joists.
jigs-n-fixtures, I don't know what a top cord is.
Well, I guess a picture is better than however many words I use...
View Image
The two shelves are over the door. Note the over the head chair rail. I use that to hang my various tool hangers. Such as the bikes.
View Image
This is a closeupof the extension plank sitting upon the 2" angle, which is also supported by the chair rail. I lied earlier. This one does not have a roofing nail. See that black spot on the plank? That's a built in hole. There's another behind the under support just to the right of that chain link hanging down from the red circle thing (which is a pull/push pin to lock in those holes. Keeps the plank from changing size without the users knowledge.
View Image
And the other side of the plank.
Here you can see that I did NOT take out the DW first for this shelf. The bottom one I had to in order for the chair rail to fit.
Actually, I could double or triple the number of planks used per shelf. I mean instead of a 14" wide shelf, I could have made it 28" or 42" wide.
For you nit pickers, note the stained and sealed floor. This color was chosen to match the outside trim of the garage because the lip of the floor slab extends out beyond the garage door. Many stop at the door.
But look closely at the first pic, down to the bottom right of the entrance door. What appears to be another piece of base (matching the stained trim) is actually the concrete stem wall coated with that Miracote stuff I mention from time to time and then faux grained, stained, and sealed. You can see more betwixt the snowblower and motorscooter.
The wood you see on the bottom shelf is more already stained oak base which will lay on top of that stained stemwall - as soon's as the weather allows me to finish a few things first.
Hope that helps.
Edited 4/17/2008 8:16 pm ET by peteshlagor
Edited 4/17/2008 8:17 pm ET by peteshlagor