Bicycle rack

Recently I moved to a new house. My housemates and I have 5 bicycles, plus plenty of spare parts, and a wide range of kit for more sports. This could become a problem, as the house did not have a shed in the garden, nor a garage to contain all this material. We then decided to use the front room on our ground floor as a sort of storage area, and I proposed to built a bicycle rack to easily bring in and out of the room our valuable means of transportation without having to move everything else all the time. This is a quick description of the rack, and of its construction. It is not a fully detailed tutorial. If you are interested in more detailed drawings or pictures, or if you want to suggest ways to improve the design, you can contact me leaving a comment.

First of all our rack needed to be free standing, as we are not allowed to drill the walls. While this makes the structural design more critical, it also means that the rack itself leaves a storage space behind, where we can put the things that we certainly do not need (i.e. the rolled up carpet that used to be in the storage room and which we do not want to ruin.

The rack itself is built with
 -3 square-section wooden posts on the floor
 -3 square-section wooden posts placed vertically on top
 -2 square-section wooden posts placed laterally on the floor to link the bottom section of the rack
 -2 boards at the top, to link the top section and hold the metal hooks of the bike rack
 -6 diagonal boards to link the vertical posts to the ones on the floor, providing stability ans stiffness
 -the posts are linked with L-shaped metal links and bolts
 -boards and posts are linked together with simple bolts
 -and the hooks are bolted to the top boards

The top boards are bolted to the back side of the vertical posts, to gain some space, to bring back the center of balance of the whole structure, and so that they work in compression, not in traction. The hooks are attached via two bolts, one for each board, reducing the load on each board. the load on each board. The position of the hooks is alternated, allowing to put them closer to each other and to fit more bikes on the rack (potentially we can fit 9). The down side of this is that it might be difficult for a week person with a heavy bike to reach the higher hooks. When stored all the bikes are completely lifted from the ground, allowing to store flat boxes underneath.

Our rack has been standing for two months now without any problem. It daily holds two really heavy steel MTBs, a lite MTB, my track bike, my CX bike and my set of road wheels, plus the bikes of occasional visitors. I think it has proven to be quite a versatile and simple solution for our situation, alleviating the problems connected with the lack of a shed. It has also been really fun to design it and build it.

Well, what to say, coma and visit us with your bike, and she will have a safe and comfortable place to stay!