How to Double your Storage Space with this Cheap Garage Lift

[Music] what makes this system so unique is the price the Hoist that I'm going to use only cost $100 which makes this electric hoist that can lift over 1,000 lb a pretty good deal your setup could be different and I have no idea what you've got for studs things like that at home so you've got to make your own decision as to what will work for you now the key to mounting this system is this this is a piece of Steel called Unistrut you can get this at home Home Depot in fact that's probably the best place to buy it because these things are 10 ft long and the good thing for my install is I won't even have to cut it I plan to install the Unistrut directly to these studs you don't want to just screw this thing right into the studs using lag bolts that just won't be enough support so I'm going to connect this using two types of brackets it slides right over the Unistrut and then it clamps tightly on it but that won't still allow me to connect right to these studs so I'm going to use a type of L bracket but just an L bracket alone isn't necessarily that strong so I found this it's called the gusset at L bracket and the gusset of these small triangular pieces on the side that are welded in and that will make this significantly stronger I'm going to screw these together using what's called grade eight bolts they're pretty much the strongest bolts you can get from normal suppliers once bolted together all I've got to do is slide them onto the Unistrut and now I can screw them into the stud I'm going to initially lay this thing out using this laser level all I want to do is kind of keep it straight I'm going to just use one bolt initially I think it will be strong enough and I do like the idea that a single bolt will allow these brackets to swing a little bit until they're all completely aligned and these are/ inch bolts I'm going to start with the end bracket that will allow me to slide the Unistrut in and then I can place each bracket in position because you've got to remember these studs may not all be exactly aligned and if there's anything off a little bit I can just adjust it as I go at this point all of the hardware is still somewhat loose I want to get everything mounted and in position and then I can finally tighten everything down now mounting this rail was fairly easy but I wanted to take it one step further because of course these struts that are going across my roof are just held in place by these nails so I drilled another hole through each crossmember at the end and inserted another grade a bolt that would prevent these studs from ever coming apart now of course it is possible that these 2x sixes could still break and Shear off and that is a risk that you take now I'm ready to install the Hoist and surprisingly this is like the easiest part of this job because now there are so many companies selling these hoist and Motors they've made all kinds of accessories and the you want if you're doing the setup like me is you want to get this Trolley system these bolt to the existing bolt holes on the Hoist and they include these heavy duty roller bearings once I put this inside the Unistrut I can now Slide the entire Trolley system back and forth I then spent a little bit of time fidgeting with this motor it wasn't particularly easy because it did bind quite a bit so so I'd adjust each bolt tighten them as much as possible and then make more adjustments until that motor finally rolled pretty easily now I got the wired version you can see here this looks like a mini industrial remote they have a wireless version as well it's only about 30 bucks more I didn't really want to get wireless because I felt like down the road that's probably the part that will break with everything tightened down it was finally time to try it out now I am going to start small all I've got to do is push the button and watch this thing work one thing you'll notice with this motor is it's fairly responsive when you press the button the motor motor stops instantly or starts instantly now it's time to try the tool I was dying to lift that is my table saw along with a built-in stand weighs about 170 lbs now when you're using a hoist like this you need to use either straps a net which I'll show you shortly to get your items up there safely and remember with the Hoist balance points are going to be different so you will need to experiment a bit to figure out where the right spot to lift is but on the saw I figured this bar across the middle would be a safe bet the motor had no problems at all lifting the saw I also lifted this lawn mower this is a really unusual real mower weighs about 250 lbs and it really didn't have any issues though you can see that the balance point here was not good here's the best safety tip that I'm going to share that others just don't talk about the first is don't ever get on your hoist elevator or lift if you keep people and pets off it you're never going to have a serious problem the other tip is don't ever get under it when you're lifting something these bolts cords cables they can break this is not a commercially engine enged system for safety once the item gets up in the air I can slide the motor off and I can unload it safely on the attic my goal here was just to be able to lift between 2 and 400 lb now one question many of you will have is how do you lift an item that doesn't have a point that you can connect to well that's easy if you use one of these cargo Nets so here I'm going to try to lift up five bags of pellets these each weigh 40 lb so that's going to be 200 lb inside the net now the net has a couple of huge bonuses first off it's easy just throw it on the ground load what you want into it when the net pulls up up all of the weight will automatically go to the [Music] center now you can also let things like toades this one's filled with pool chemicals weighs about 50 lbs and all I've got to do is use the net I don't have to really balance anything I'm not even closing the tote once I finish with this thing I am thrilled I'm already using it my garage space is all opened up and now I can load it with a lot more junk but in the meantime I'm already thinking about some improvements first I've only got these four support beams now I really think I would like to add a couple of more just for a margin of safety and it would potentially allow me to lift even more the other annoyance here was the cables and the power outlets because I don't have an electric outlet here yet I decided to try my eco flow to see if it would actually power this thing and it worked perfectly this one is the Delta 2 max this is an easy way to power this thing temporarily until I can install my outlet I get tons of feedback about these things that they can't run tools and you'd be surprised at how much equipment these small power stations can actually run I spent just about $250 in total and now I have essentially doubled the space in my garage it is tough to spend any amount of money like that and get that kind of result but what else would you guys recommend would you do anything else none of the equipment you saw in today's video was sponsored except for one item the ecoflow power station and if you've ever wanted to get one of their power stations they are fantastic especially for running things like tools you can get up to 60% off right now you can go to the top comment in this video as well as the description I've got a special code and a link and you can take it advantage of the year- end promotion before it's over and I hope you like this video if you did be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you're not already for more videos coming up

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 564,788

Keywords: garage elevator, diy hoist, diy elevator, vevor, enrgy, enrgey, diy, diy garage lift, best lift, easy diy lift

Id: Tdn_IAm1e0g

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023