It’s a standard attached garage and into it one must find room for a car, work-related equipment, kids’ toys, hobby tools, gardening stuff, baby buggies, the “big” roaster only used on special occasions, all manner of household extras and camping gear, not to mention assorted snowblowers and shovels. After you squeeze all that in, where the heck are you going to put the really important things, like two snowmobiles and two quads?
“I was OK until we got a new quad and a new snowmobile for my wife,” said homeowner George,” who added jokingly, “Really! It’s all her stuff in here. Her car! Her quad! Her snowmobile!”
George’s house slopes steeply toward the back and the yard is relatively small. He has no side yard where he can easily stash the big machines, so short of booting his wife’s car outside; the garage was the only available storage space for those machines. But where in that 22x23-foot box could he put them?
The machines had to be accessible for use every weekend, but they are by nature, seasonal. That meant he needed to be able to easily load up his quads in summer or the snowmobiles once winter came. George decided to pile them one on top of the other.
“I got the idea from snowmobile wrecker companies and from Martin Motor Sports, which sells a lift that you can use,” George said.
George used palette racking to build a structure that looks a bit like it was made from a giant Meccano set. The racking is what big stores and warehouses normally use to stack shipping palettes.
“The racks are rated to hold up to 10,000 lbs. My snowmobiles weigh 500 lbs. each and the quads are 800 lbs.”
George said that unlike many garages, his has a higher ceiling, because the house has a bonus room. That meant there was just enough room to get the machines tucked in on top of each other.
“The garage ceiling is eight-feet high at the front and goes to 11-feet high at the back, near the house. That allowed me to do this.”
George used a welding grinder to cut the racks to make the frame. He put stabilizing crossbars across the top and wrapped the racking in metal mesh for extra strength. Most winter weekends, it’s easy to get the snowmobiles out of the garage and similarly in the summer months, the quads, which will at that time be on the bottom, are just driven out the front of the garage and onto George’s trailer. The tricky part comes at the end of each season, when he has to change the location of the vehicles.
The racks are adjustable so in winter, when the taller quads must go on the top shelf, George can make room for them. The seasonal exchange requires two people.
“Everyone who sees it asks how did I get them up there,” said George. “Twice a year – in April and then again in October – it takes two people about one and one-half hours to manoeuvre the trailer.”
One person has to stand up on the second level to inch the garage door up or down manually and George is able to use the trailer ramp to drive the ATVs into place. But once the machines are in their designated storage spot, the garage door can be put up or down normally.
The snowmobiles fit on top more easily than the taller quads. That means the quads have to go in sideways, to allow room for the garage door. George moves the trailer ramp so he can position the machines where he wants them.
“Most weekends, it’s nothing to get those vehicles onto the trailer. It just takes a few minutes. So twice a year it takes a little more time. That’s not a big deal,” George said.
