50 Handy Tricks

Step 32: The World's Best Bicycle Storage System

Here it is, the best way to store bicycles in a shared space.
They hang by hooking their seats over a horizontal pipe so they hang just overhead.
If they don't have seats you can use a loop of rope or poke them over the end of the pipe.

We used to hang them over one of the water pipes, but the safety office didn't like that. So I used tapcon masonry screws to bolt a length of unistrut to the ceiling, and used chain to hang a different pipe from that.

This method gets them off the floor and out of the way, and lets you hang any number of bikes in a small space. It doesn't bend the wheels etc. etc. Assign your students to list all the marvelous ways this simple pipe is the greatest bike storage system in history.

Comments

[eulaliaaaa!]

I see some weird bikes on that rack...

[zygote90]

how do u get 1 bike down without all of them falling or what if your bike is in the middle of the "tangle" of all the other bikes? although a great idea

[lazyme]

It appears there's a track attached to the ceiling in the center of the photo. A pipe is attached by a chain at each end. You pick up your bike and put the front edge of your seat over the hanging pipe and gravity makes the bike tilt forward, holding it up on the pipe. The bike hangs over the pipe by the seat like a clothes hanger over a rod. I prefer the pulley system you can buy for $25. You just put the hooks over the rear of the seat and the handle bars and pull it up out of the way with the rope and tie it off. No lifting involved.

[Wolf_Demon]

I thought the 1st photo was some bizarre optical illusion!

[xirekaj]

looks like a jumble of bikes to me

[Cabe]

One man's jumble is another man's tangle :)