Building the Ultimate Bike Storage System
With a family of five, a garage workshop, and a canine approaching 15 years old, I need lots of storage. How I got clutter under control with a custom bike rack.
First the video. This article, however, should stand on its own. It delves into my thoughts on the setup after using it for more than a year:
Over pretty much my entire lifetime I’ve enjoyed having a bicycle... Then two bikes when my friend sold me his hardtail (eventually stripped down and modified for single-speed operation). Then came three, four, five, and ~six1 bikes per an increasing family size.
While I/we are pretty good about getting rid of clutter, necessary things still manage to build up, which in turn need dedicated storage if they’re not going to be strewn about our garage. After many years, and much messiness, I have finally created what I believe to be a highly optimized bike + stuff storage solution. May I present my Ultimate Multi-Bike Wall Storage System (3D model):
Bike storage design principles
My rack system hinges, both literally and figuratively, on two principles:
Bikes are to be stored vertically, with the back tire on the ground, and the front tire captured above via a length of PVC pipe jammed between two lengths of 2x6s. I measured the distance from the ground to the center of the front/top wheel’s axis to dictate how high this PVC peg should sit for each bike.
Space between and above bikes is used for shelves and other storage
When I first envisioned this system, I only considered the vertical members and bike mounting. Depending on your storage needs, each set of vertical supports could be used on its own, but with shelves and custom storage doodads👇 integrated into the design, I can take advantage of even more wall space.
While the design itself will vary for each particular person’s needs, the basic system can be adapted to many situations. I’m also quite proud of the scooter mount 👆 made out of a custom cut piece of 2x10, as these conveyances are notoriously hard to store. The 3D-printed racket mounts and spacers that I integrated into the design worked quite well too.
Clean Garage > Messy Garage
With space for 5 bikes on the wall, plus two or three scooters, and lots of other things on top and in-between, I have managed to make good use of my wall space. Could it be improved? Probably, but things are packed in there pretty tightly!.
Ultimate Bike Rack Drawbacks:
Getting my small 2006 Acrua TL inside the garage (while keeping the other side as a shop area) was one goal of this project. The good news is that with bikes and stuff stored on the wall, it is indeed possible to get it inside. The bad news is that one nearly needs to enter and exit via the sunroof. Definitely not practical for everyday use.2
It’s also not as easy to use and stow the bikes as with a simple floor rack that you might see at a school or other bike-prevalent area (see my former rack, below). It’s a definite tradeoff, but the space efficiency seems well worth it.
This cost somewhere around $200 in materials, plus a significant amount of time to install everything. Was it worth it? Well my garage is cleaner3, and should be for the foreseeable future. So, yes?
One might also argue that I increased the value of my house. Whether or not potential buyers would see it that way is an open question. On the other hand, if I freed up a 10 x 10 foot space in my garage, that’s an extra 100 square feet. Per ChatGPT and some very rough assumptions, garage space in the Tampa, Florida metro where I live is worth roughly $100 per square foot. Therefore this storage space is equivalent to $10,000 of garage area(!).
A 10-year-old child might refer to my math kind of sus’, but even if it’s just a quarter of that value, it’s still a good chunk of change. On a related note, when considering what to buy and/or keep we should really think about not just how much something costs, but how much or your home value you’ll have to sacrifice for it!4
Ultimate Bike Rack Build Mistakes
Overall the build turned out really well. However, one big mistake was using hot glue to lock in/diffuse the strip of LEDs after the shelf was installed. As you can imagine, hot glue works much better when installed with gravity in the downward direction. Sometimes it’s not just what you do, it’s also the order in which you do it.5
The other mistake wasn’t so much a matter of how I built things, but how the YouTube video for the project did. My thumbnail is admittedly not great6 and maybe the title isn’t either. Or maybe it’s just not the kind of video that my audience likes.
At the same time, this has to be one of the most useful builds that I have done, and I’ve yet to see another bike storage system with this sort of functionality. This was discouraging, but I suppose it comes down to the question of am I building something, or making a video. Here the build was definitely the priority.
Side Benefit: Bonus Aluminum Extrusion
Before this build, I had a bike rack made out of 2020 aluminum extrusion. Interestingly, that video didn’t do very well either. With the new rack set up, I could disassemble my extrusion rack and use it elsewhere. It’s almost infinitely recyclable!
Do you want to build an ULTIMATE bike rack?
Well, I’m glad you asked! I would be honored if you’d like to copy/modify/build on this bike rack and storage system. While no two racks of this type will be the same, you can find more info in the links below:
Instructables writeup with materials list and more specific techniques
Printables page with basic CAD model and STLs for 3D-printed doo-dads
Video documenting the build (embedded above)
Thanks for reading. If you DO build your own version, please let me know! - hi@jeremyscook.com -JC
Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow along as I post weekly about engineering, technology, making, and projects. Warning: I am a native Florida man, and may get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Maybe I even had an alligator or two as pets growing up. Perhaps they are alive today and could be used to test earth-wormhole pet friendliness.
Any Amazon links are affiliate
Addendum/Footnotes:
Bike # 6 is now hanging in my garage without wheels. I keep thinking I need to fix it up to use it again, which wouldn’t be too hard. Or maybe I need to sell it, but it’s hard to get rid of something that you’ve put a lot of time, money, and work into, and would probably get only a fraction of even the money you’ve spent on it if sold. OTOH, as discussed, home square footage does have a value in monetary terms.
Another slight annoyance: When all bikes are present in this rack, the handlebars are close enough that they but kind of get in the way of each other. If nothing else, it’s difficult to hang helmets from them. You could try something like the racks shown here, which actually swivels for loading/unloading and/or more efficient space usage in some scenarios. On the other hand, they are around $100 each and don’t include any additional storage.
In theory it is cleaner. The reality seems to be that clutter expands to the level at which it can be maintained. Space in an empty garage somehow just kind of gets filled up.
E.g. is that trash can really worth ~$300 of floor space? Well yes, it probably is, even if–like the $1.50 hot dog and drink at Costco–you might not be able to explain it using traditional economics.* It’s almost as if you are paying for floorspace to store your trash and the actual can is immaterial.
*Yes, the hot dog/drink could be considered a loss leader since you just spent $500 on eggs, tortilla chips, and the zip-off pants and kayak that you didn’t come in for but you obviously need. Then the included drink becomes a weird experiment where you don’t t really want it, but you go ahead and get Pepsi/Starry anyway because they don’t have Coke/Sprite. Or maybe you try to give the drink away and no one wants it, even though you just paid $12 for the exact same thing at a football game.
Or maybe Pepsi/Starry is out of sugar mix, but you’re not going to complain because, well, what do you really care? And another thing, I’d like to know why Starry is everywhere all of a sudden. It's like some vast drink industry conspiracy.
I’m not sure when I decided to add the hot glue. Maybe it wasn’t until I actually had the shelf on the wall. I’d like to think if I’d thought of it earlier I would have done this while still on the ground. The slots, however, turned out to be a nice technique for recessing the lights. Things would have turned out better and less painful if I’d planned the hot glue portion better.
Maybe I should fix it, you might say. Maybe I should point at it and make a “YouTube face” (you know what I mean) demonstrating how unbelievable this build is. Maybe that would work well. IDK though, I feel like such thumbnail images are so played out at this point. Some things are amazing and deserve a YouTube face, but when everything is portrayed as amazing so that it will get clicks, no one can tell what’s genuine and what is real. I’m not a fan.