DIY Electric Garage Storage Hoist | Snow Blower Lift | Garage Makeover Pt. 5

i really wish i would have thought of this when i was putting it up there all right the comment section one of my previous videos when i built these threaded rod shelves really inspired me to build this lift the number one question was how do you get your snowball up there why did you put your snowblower up there well i put it up there because i didn't want to store it on the ground and we have a really small garage and how do i get it up there i put it up there on a ladder but uh you guys were right and when it came to getting it down it wasn't so fun so it's been sitting up there for over a year now and it's time to get it down so i think i got a little better way of doing it this time all right so every one of my projects starts off with doing as much research as possible and for me that's normally starts with watching as many youtube videos as possible and then trying to make a good solid sketch of my ideas and then because of what i do i definitely have to do some 3d modeling now that i have a plan i'm going to go ahead and start cutting some two by fours to make the platform for the hoist [Music] [Applause] here you can see i'm marking out all the locations for screws where i'm going to screw these boards together i like to mark them out i'll use a speed square so i have a nice straight line so the screws kind of line up with each other then i'm going to pre-drill them and screw them all together [Music] [Music] [Applause] here i'm using three quarter inch maple plywood yeah a little bit overkill but that's kind of to match the rest of the shelves that i already built i just marked it out real quick and then using the craig track saw which i'm really loving the way that this thing cuts i used this to cut out the rough sizes and then i came back in with a jigsaw and cut out the pieces that i couldn't get with the track saw off camera i went ahead and gave this thing a coat of paint a white high gloss paint on the two by fours and then a coat of danish oil on the maple plywood just to kind of further match the shelves that i already built then using one and a quarter inch deck screws i screwed the plywood down to the two by fours here's the hardware that i'm using for the platform these are 3 8 by 6 inch long eye bolts i have one inch washers and then 3 8 inch nylon stop washers so that they don't back out to install the hardware to the platform i needed to drill some holes in all four corners i went two inches in from each one of the ends and i started with a one inch paddle bit almost the same exact size as the washers after i had the hole drilled with the paddle bit i came back in with a 3 8 inch drill bit and drilled all the way through to the other side the last step was to take off the blue tape and the blue tape was just there to keep most of the splintering down the last step for the platform is to mount the trolley wheels that'll ride in the super strut which i've mounted to the walls here's the super strut that i bought from lowe's this is what those trolley wheels will ride in it's only sold in 10 foot lengths and i needed an eight foot piece so i cut it down with a jigsaw once i had it cut down then i pre-drilled holes every foot in the solid areas of it so that i can install it to the wall with screws and i had to install it with screws because those trolley wheels wouldn't fit with a larger bolt head out in the garage i installed the super strut rails to the wall the first step was to find the studs i found their locations down at the bottom of the wall the middle of the wall and then the top just to make sure i really knew where those things were each one of these rails will directly line up with a stud in the wall so i lined up the first one made sure it was level and plumb and then screwed it in in all the pre-drilled locations then when i went to put up the second rail i really wanted to make sure that it was an equal distance away from the second one so that as that platform is going up and down those trolley wheels are not binding up these two rails are 100 parallel here are the cabinet screws that i used uh they're a long screw with a larger head on them and i use these because they're really super low profile and the trolley wheels will be able to pass over them unlike a larger bolt and washer the next step was to drill out all the holes in the ceiling and i did this first so that i had identification marks up in the attic so i knew exactly where those pulleys had to go up in the attic to line up with the platform that's going to be in the garage here's what i ended up installing in the attic above those holes so that you can see at the bottom here they are held up by four by fours those four by fours connect into the rafters using four by four joist hangers and then on top of that i have two two by fours that are stretching or spanning that distance in between those two two by fours is a pulley i modified this pulley from one that i bought at harbor freight so i took off the hook and took out their bolts i replaced them with longer 3 8 inch bolts washers and stop nuts so that they don't back out and then i also have these metal l brackets i think they're called hurricane straps that i use just to kind of anchor those two by fours down to the four by fours there you can see the pulley down in there how it comes up vertically and the cable is going to come out one side of the two by four there but that's a better look of what's going to happen up in the attic then here's an example of the horizontal pulleys that go up in the attic so at this point i have cables coming up through the ceiling and then they're coming out towards the center of the garage these will be installed horizontally so that i can now get the cables moving in another direction i can get them centrally located so that they can all get to one place and i can attach them to my manifold that will then connect to the hoist and yet again i modified those harbor freight pulleys taking out their bolts taking off the hook and replacing them with 3 8 inch bolts washers and nuts all right and here's the heavy lifting part of the the project here the thing that makes it all work you can see that i'm using a cheaper a relatively cheap harbor freight electric winch uh this one's rated for 880 pounds uh with a with a double loop going through a snatch block this is only the kind of the single stretch of cable so it's only rated at 440 pounds in this orientation but i have it connected to a 2x10 with two four by fours on either side and then a piece of super strut on the top you can see that i ran an additional wire i'm not going to show you how to rewire this thing but you can see that i have a wire that runs into the control box there that it's extending the length of the controller uh really the big thing you need to to be aware of there is you can't use romex for this wire you have to have four insulated conductors and there's some other really good videos that show you how to rewire this thing yet again i'm not a professional electrician so i don't want to go too deep into there but it did end up working out really well for me um you can see that the cable of the hoist comes down into my manifold uh the manifold is made out of a extra piece of superstrut that i had left over a bunch of eye bolts yet again with washers and stop nuts and then they go down into the tensioners that will allow me to adjust and tighten those cables individually so that if i don't get them 100 tight the first time i can tighten those up loosen them up so that i can get the platform 100 level and then this whole thing will be bolted and screwed into the rafters in this same exact orientation like it is right now all right so here's what it looks like up in the attic and i didn't film this process because i live in ohio and it's down in the teens right now so it was not a pleasant thing i'm not going to lie being up here in the attic this time of year so a bit a little bit better planning would have worked better but at any rate you can see what's going on here and it's not real light but you can see that all the way over on the left hand side here i have the hoist mounted to that 2x10 that is screwed and lag screwed to the rafters i wired up an outlet to it so that i could plug it in and then i have the cable kind of one stretch connecting into my manifold uh the manifold like you saw was made up of a bunch of different eye bolts that are connected to the turn buckles so that i can adjust it the turn buckles then go into all of the eighth inch stainless steel cable that goes into one set of pulleys directions directs them off into a different direction then down into the platform you can see that up here i had to use some plywood and create like a little shelf for the manifold to ride on because when you're pulling the lift up it tensions and the cables move up lift off of the platform but when you are letting it down or you know reducing pressure on it those cables tend to sag down and i just wanted to give it a nice smooth place to ride on so that we didn't have any problems so i just put that up there as a safety precaution to make this thing operate a little bit better but this is what it looks like up in the attic then back down in the garage i needed to install the platform i just lifted it up to the top of the super strut and put the trolley wheels inside the rails and lowered it all the way down so that i could start connecting the cables then when it came to installing the cables i lowered the the platform all the way to the bottom and i pulled the winch out to its full out position where i wanted it to be when the platform was at the bottom so you have the right cable length and i installed all the cables to the eye bolts i did this by first putting on the mechanical cable clamps put them through the eye bolts i put on a thimble to help hold the cable and so it doesn't crimp too bad and then i went around and made sure that i really tightened these cable clamps down pretty tight i chose to go with the mechanical ones so i could really feel how tight they're getting and i could adjust them and and kind of continue to add tension to them later there are a bunch of different type of cable clamps out there they make aluminum ones that you can just crimp and those ones hold pretty tight too i just went with mechanical ones once all the cables were connected i went into the adjustment process where i was going up and down into the attic and adjusting the turnbuckles to get each one of the cables tight you can see that i have some weight on here to keep some tension on the cables i ended up putting a bunch of weight on this and leaving it overnight to try to help stretch out the cables a little bit then when it actually comes to getting the snow blower down i needed to create another little platform a little bridge platform because my lift doesn't make it all the way over to the other shelf because i didn't want it going over top of this little man door here so i created this little platform drilled four holes into it and i pinned it up there with hitch pins to connect the lift and the shelves together you can see the pins on this side of the lift fit super tight i actually have to pound them in with a hammer but once those pins are in just for kind of safety purposes i do put cotter pins in each one of those pins so they're not coming out but as tight as they fit they wouldn't come out anyway [Music] [Music] not bad then you can see i still have to lift the snow blower a little bit because of the way the foundation wall is in my garage all right i must admit i don't think this lift came out too bad it was definitely a little bit more of a difficult project than i've ever done because i've never done anything with a hoist or a pulley before and i should say before you start a project like this or you want to tackle a project like this a short disclaimer like i'm showing you what i did maybe not necessarily how i would recommend you doing it i think this thing is super strong i think it's going to hold up for anything that i put on here the winch is rated for 880 pounds the way that i have it rigged up it's only 440 but it's more than enough weight for anything that i'm ever going to put on here this snowblower is only about 185 pounds so i'm well within kind of my limit there the cables are rated for like 13 14 1500 pounds something like that all the eye bolts and all of those i checked to make sure that we weren't going over on those they're each rated at like 150 or 160 pounds something like that for each one of those which doesn't sound like very much but if you distribute the weight evenly you know you're not you're not putting too much load on any one of those corners but really the reason that i did this project was because when i built these shelves up here there were two main things that i saw in the comments number one was how the heck are you gonna get your snowblower down and so they made a good point i went to go get it down before this winter and it wasn't going to be an easy task so i decided to come up with this thing to make it a little bit easier yeah i'm probably only going to use this lift maybe two three times a year to get things up and down but when i do need it it's a it's a life saver it's a back saver it's it's it's going to be really nice to have i think the other thing that people were talking about was the garage door spring when that goes with these shelves i really do think it's hard to tell on camera but i do think i left enough space up there where you could get that spring off a quarter turn at a time i am no garage door installation expert by any means but you know we'll find out what happens when that time comes i'll definitely make a video just like i made a video to explain how i was going to get this thing down i'll make a video on that and i could be wrong um it could be really bad i might have to but worst case scenario i have to take the shelves down uh either take a piece of plywood out so you can go in between the the support rails or i gotta take the entire shelf down it's it's not a huge to me i don't think that's a huge deal um but so overall this thing this thing's functioning pretty well i think it's gonna do exactly what i need it to do and gonna make things a whole lot easier for me uh technically i can put my snowblower up there every time after i use it let it dry out put it back up there i don't know if i'm gonna do that but that's that's a little crazy uh it's definitely made getting the snow blower down pretty easy getting it back up pretty easy is it perfect no i still have to lift the snow blower up on here and off of here because of the way that my garage wall is and yeah i could have done things to get around that but you know this this is going to work perfectly fine if you're thinking about doing this yourself please make sure you know what you're doing okay again again i did this just to show you my process and how i built mine i wouldn't necessarily tell you to do it this way this was my first time doing this i probably used way more pulleys and did way more stuff than i had to and there was probably an easier way to do this actually i know there was an easier way to do this if you would have just put the lift on the inside of the garage and all the hardware on the on the ceiling of your garage inside the garage not up in the attic it would have made this so much easier and saved so much time uh but i wanted that clean look i wanted things out of the way so let me know down in the comments what you guys think and what you would have done differently or if you see anything that looks you know unsafe to you or something like that let me know um i'm not always you know i'm not perfect and i don't claim to be but anyway um all the stuff that i used i will leave in i leave as links down in the description in case you want to see any of that but uh anyway thanks for watching another video and uh if you liked it give it a like if you're liking what's going on here subscribe and uh hopefully i'll see in another video

Channel: That Tech Teacher

Views: 982,470

Keywords: Garage hoist, garage storage, garage storage ideas, hoist, harbor freight, garage lift, snow blower, snow blower storage, garage organization, garage makeover, suspended shelves, diy garage storage, diy garage storage shelves, diy garage shelves, garage elevator, that tech teacher, ceiling hoist, attic hoist, attic lift, shop hoist, shop lift, attic elevator, storage lift, storage elevator, harbor freight hoist, Electric Hoist

Id: XBauZyjNGxI

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021