Welding wall shelves

[Premiershipman]

Hi, I am hoping to get a bit of advice on making diy welded wall shelving.

Basically I was able to take about 40 pieces of 1" box section for free from a local merchant (they were going in the dump bin). Its 25mm square and about 1.5mm thick walls and about 800mm long.

I planned on welding them into triangular shapes and then rawlbolting them to the gable wall of the garage loft and laying on 3/4" plywood.

They are going to be set about 400/500mm spacing along the wall and will be taking a fair bit of weight - all my tools that are currently in the main garage are being moved up into the garage loft so I can create a workshop space to actually make things !

Does anyone have any advice on the best design of the shelves - standard right angle triangle (A in the attached picture) or right angle triangle with the top section projecting out a bit more (B in the attached picture).

Anyone know of a load calculating program for this kind of thing ?

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Shady

 

[gavuk]

I think you need to be careful how much loading is on the gable end wall,or indeed the trusses,when i built my garage they asked if the trusses would carry a floor etc.....my builder mate insisted we tie the trusses to the gable end to stop it blowing over as it was single skin,a cavity wall is stronger and maybe different though.......depending on the weight ,perhaps something freestanding on the joists and tied to the gable end would ,spread the weight between the two,I'll look forward to other views on the subject

 

[Premiershipman]

Hey Gav

I may have not been totally clear but the gable wall that I am rawlbolting them too is dense concrete blocks, with rawlbolts specced to about 250kg shear capacity.

A friend of mine at work suggested having the back plate of the shelf made longer and bolting the top and bottom of the back plate to the wall and make the diagonal section a steeper angle for more weight support. Or to have 2 shelves with one long backplate (picture below shows these ideas.)

 

[gavuk]

Honestly ,i'm outta of my depth with this,gable ends are not loaded the same as the wall beneath the wall plate which is supporting the weight of the roof,
Even with blocks, you are relying on strength the cement ,as your proposed loading is not downwards through the centre of the blocks...on an unsupported wall,depending on the roof construction .
Can you post a pic?........hopefully I'm way off the mark and someone else will tell you i'm talking tosh .....but I would still construct it as if it was floor standing and tie back to the blockwork, ,so the weight is spread between the ceiling joists and the gable end
Someone wiser than me will be along soon

 

[Premiershipman]

Yeh it's a bit badly described so here is a fuller explanation : the house is a detached 4 bed which had a new extension added to the side which essentially was a single storey extension with a pitched roof.

The extension is the new garage, and the tools are going into the roof space, the shelving is due to be rawlbolted onto the old outside gable wall of the house which is now in the roof space.

I wanted to steer clear of any weight loading on the trusses, which is why I am doing cantilever type shelving which transfers no direct load onto the bottom chords of the roof trusses.

The first roof truss of the extension is nailed into the old gable wall, and with it being an original outside cavity wall made of dense block I thought it would be fine for loading up with tools.

 

[gavuk]

Sounds ok to me too,.....I was talking about a completely different scenario thankfully.......

 

[gavuk]

The second 2 diagrams look good to me ,much easier to fix to the wall...how many shelves in total?

 

[Premiershipman]

Looking to probably run the shelving along the entire wall as I have shed loads of tools !!

The house wall is about 9m long and I am looking to do a long shelf row about 0.5m up from the loft floor and about 6m long with brackets about 60cm apart, with a smaller shelf row above it that will be about 4m long.

This should be plenty of storage space for all my tools and garden paraphernalia !!

 

[graffian]

anyone have a good design I would love to see it. I put up a shefl to take some of the lin bins and manuals and catalogs. The shelf ended up heavy and took quite a bit of metal. I made them up as I went. I drew them afterwards to see if I could make them with a lot less metal, had a fiddle and couldn't save a lot..
Shelves are handy but I need to get another 50 or so bins off the floor;-)

 

[gavuk]

Graffian,any reason you can't use the louvred panels,for the lin bins?

 

[graffian]

Graffian,any reason you can't use the louvred panels,for the lin bins?

I had several of the louvered panels, I found them awkward and they broke the backs of several bins.