Garage overhead storage

[Donald]

Looking at some overhead storage for my garage.

The Husky one has short horizontal supports that attach to the garage ceiling joists. The Gladiator one has longer horizontal supports that should be able to be attached to two ceiling joists that are 16" apart.

It would seem with the short horizontal supports you have to locate them where the ceiling joists are and for the most part the vertical supports cannot be too far away from a ceiling joist. With the longer ones it seems you attach each horizontal support to two ceiling joists and then attach the vertical supports where to want to the horizontal supports.

Looking for people who have installed overhead garage storage.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-4...-Ceiling-Mount-Garage-Rack-ACR4896B/303493157

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Gladiat...e-Rack-48-in-W-x-48-in-D-GALS44M2KG/312453492

 

[Leo99]

The one I have looks like the Gladiator. My house was built with engineered joists and I don't put a lot of faith into them for this type of use. They are very narrow and made of glued wood. I only have light stuff up there.

 

[The_Jeff]

Engineered trusses aren't supposed to be loaded on the horizontal cross-bars, what you call ceiling joists.

We all put stuff up there, but keep it light, please, if you have trusses.

 

[MNgopher]

Correct, unless you had the trusses upgraded to support storage, like I did in my third stall, for extra cost.

 

[Spartanfool]

I have 3 of them, two different brands. As I recall, you locate your joist/cross bar attachment points and then the design has some flexibility to attach the horizontal "floor" to the vertical pieces.

 

[AZjeff]

If you can orient the Gladiator brackets to bolt to 2 trusses or ceiling joists you'd distribute the load to 4 instead of 2. In the developments here trusses are the preferred construction and it seems every other garage has these overhead storage units. I've never heard of a structural failure. I built my own and one side is against a side wall and those verticals are bolted to the wall top plate.

 

[RhondaHonda]

I have2 sets of the ones from Costco and like them. The bracket for each corner goes across a few trusses in my garage so it really spreads the load out. I wouldn’t put anvils up there or anything but great for getting the kids seasonal crap out of the way.

 

[Lenny5160]

I built my own using 2 x 4s and 1/2" chip board. I have a 8' x 6' unit on each side of the opener above my 16' door.

They are a great use of otherwise useless space. I must admit that I've never considered the possibility of structural issues.

I have debated putting them above the 8' door also, but they would be quite narrow.

 

[Donald]

As an interesting side note I cannot tell you how many roof trusses I made in the early 1970s in NJ during college summers. The wood for the main triangle was always good wood but the webs were often yellow pine, junky wood. While the bosses might not have appreciated it we did a pretty good job of tossing aside wood that was not straight. The main truss machine was about 12' tall and maybe 25' wife and rode back and forth on metal tracks (like small railroad tracks). Back then getting the trusses out the door was more important than safety. They always knew when OSHA was coming in for an inspection.