Wall Mounted Lumber Rack - Weight/fixings question

[LancsRick]

As this is a specific question I thought I'd make a specific thread for it. It's been suggested to me that I get my lumber off the floor to gain some workshop space, and initially the view was to hang it from the ceiling. Since I don't have exposed rafters in the garage, and I already have ladders roped to the ceiling, I've decided to adopt the advice, but put a wall mounted lumber rack up near the ceiling.

So, I've been doing some reading up on various designs on the net, and wanted to run this by you guys.

Rack to be 2.4m (8ft) long, 2ft wide.
Structure will be 4 25mm ply brackets at 6" height, running out the full 2ft.
Ply will be cross-bolted (M8 x3) between two pieces of 3x1 running vertically.
Those vertical 3x1's (8 in total) will have two french cleat notches in to distribute the load over two "rows" of cleats
Each cleat will have 4-5 fixings into mortar of a red brick wall
Fixings will be M8 75mm sleeve anchors (so 50mm in wall, half the brick thickness)

Now if I do a worst case scenario and say that a collection of MDF, oak, ply, mahogany etc would have a density of about 700kg/m3 (!), at 2.4m x 60cm x 30cm of wood stashed on that shelf, I'm talking 300kg! Let's rein that in and say it'll never be perfectly full, but even at 50% that's 150kg.

That's spread over 2.4m, but it feels a hell of a weight (and ignores the ply/pine of the structure) - I'm no structural engineer but can I really hang that off a wall?

 

[Adam9453]

The wall should be ok in my opinion but I would look at the triton timber racks. I've got them and they're very robust, strong and well designed

 

[LancsRick]

They look interesting. The way they're made, could I cut an upright in half and make two sets of 3 shelf racking rather than one of 6? That would be utterly perfect...

 

[sunnybob]

hanging that weight close to the wall is no problem whatsoever, a normal screw will hold a couple ton before it shears.
But if the rack is going to extended 2 ft from the wall, then leverage against the bolts will be very high.
If you use the wall as one side of the rack, but place an upright at each end down to the floor as the other side of the rack, then you can hold a mountain up there.

 

[JakeS]

But if the rack is going to extended 2 ft from the wall, then leverage against the bolts will be very high.

I've used Fischer hammerfix fixings to attach into brick walls both a timber rack and the winch for an assembly table that lowers down from the ceiling. I can hang off of the timber rack (and I'm not small) and the winch hasn't caused me any trouble at all.

They're very much like regular wall plugs, but the 'screw' part has a thread which is more like barbs than thread, so you can hammer them in one way - which makes it far easier to hang giant timber rack pieces when half-way up a ladder and without help - and unscrew them with a regular screwdriver to get them out again. There's probably some generic no-brand versions which work equally well, but I've only tried the Fischer ones.

 

[marcros]

The wall should be ok in my opinion but I would look at the triton timber racks. I've got them and they're very robust, strong and well designed

i am tempted to get one of these to put outside for seasoning turning logs. for 30-35 quid, i couldn't make one from fence posts for that. just need a couple of scaffold boards as shelves.

 

[Adam9453]

They look interesting. The way they're made, could I cut an upright in half and make two sets of 3 shelf racking rather than one of 6? That would be utterly perfect...

Sorry for the delayed response, you could certainly cut them in half. Just to need to drill some extra fixing holes into the uprights.
They're very strong. I've got mine mounted into the studs of my wooden 'shed' and its fully laden, hasn't sagged or creaked with the strain whatsoever.