The StorEase Smart panel and ebay Gravity Bike Carrier at work
There are a lot of bikes in my house, and increasingly, people need to find solutions to storing bicycles when they don’t have a garage. Well, a lot of Perth residents still have garages – the majority, I’d say, but we only have a car port, which is less than ideal for storing bikes and has barely enough room for any anyway.
Initially, when I realised that bikes would be stored in the house, I bought a rack from ebay which leans against the wall and holds two moderately weighted bicycles. It has plastic coated hooks, but isn’t ideal for the Bike Fridays.
The two tiered rack is actually this one on ebay. They are still selling them, and they are still the same price, so I guess they are pretty popular. They come with a massive bolt which you can use to anchor them to the wall, but I haven’t done this yet because I want to be able to move it around the house occasionally. When loading or unloading bikes, the rack can rub against the wall a bit, so I cut the sleeve off a jumper that I was going to throw out anyway, and put that over the top part of the rack to provide some cushioning – this saves the wall from dents or black marks.
For lighter bikes, like my Giant TCR, I decided I needed a wheel-hanging system. I went out to Bunnings and bought a ‘StorEase Smart Panel’. From memory, the panel was around $20, and the bike hooks about $10 each. There is plenty of room to mount two bikes on one length of panel, and I got another couple of hooks to hang helmets and bike locks from. The Smart Panel attaches to the wall by 6 x 8mm screws, so it is fairly sturdy, but I wouldn’t load more than 30kgs on to it. At the moment mine is holding about 20kg. The only disadvantage is the tyre marks on the wall. I am going to do something a little more creative with the paint so that you can’t see them.
Of course, there are more than four bikes in the house – the xtracycle and the Bike Fridays don’t lend themselves to hanging like this, so I have some bikes just parked against the wall, and a couple stashed behind the couch where you won’t trip over them.
perthcyclist 