Garage Snowblower Hoist Project

October 2009
The steel i-beams arrived, along with the WESCO Economy Hand Hoist (orange) and CM Ball-Bearing Trolley (black in box). I jumped up and down on the i-beams to test their strength. They are 2 5/8" wide by 4" tall, 7.7 pounds per foot. One is 112.5" long, the other is 109" long.
The steel was from:
   Jason Posner at Beach Road Steel, 1900 Brampton Street, Hamilton, Ontario, L8H 3S5, 905 547 7234 phone, 905 544 2588 fax, www.beachroadsteel.ca.
They delivered the i-beams right into my garage.
Also in the picture is the new laser level, and a laser parking guide. The 2x4s are for my saw horses.


Old shelf demolition, with long sledge hammer and hand sledge hammer and yellow pri-bar and a piece of wood to fulcrum the pri-bar against (rather than pushing it through the drywall). The long sledge hammer made short work of lifting the 3/8" plywood shelf up, and then bashing the front 2x4 off. The 2x4's were mounted with 3.5" spiral nails, none of which were that hard to pull, and the front four nails were driven into drywall only. Some of the lower shelf was screwed into white support brackets, and the ends were finishing nailed into place.




Some new wood and supplies
two 10' 2x10s
two 8' 2x10s (ended up buying a 3rd one later)
12 pressure treated 4x4's (much cheaper than cedar)
PL-400 glue, 1.5" deck screws,
Verithane (exterior), white paint, paint brushes,
box of 3/8" washers, box of 1/2" washers,
3/8" 5" lag bolts, 4" galvanized spiral nails


used Johnson Rotary Laser Level for the new shelf height, marked the bottom of the shelf (the top of the 2x10s, bottom of the 4x4s). My car hood is 48" high, so I made the bottom of the shelf 50" high in case I get a new car with a slightly different height.


marked the studs


three 2x10s with two 4x4s. The 2x10's are mounted with 5" lag bolts and 3/8" washers.
There are six lag bolts in each side, and ten lag bolts in the back 2x10.


Same view, just a more downward angle. (and yes, that ladder is on the wrong rung) You can just make out one of the roller wheels of the Ridgid 12 In. Sliding Compound Mitre Saw with Adjustable Laser (with table).


All twelve 4x4s are cut, but two near the back have been temporarily removed (and placed upon the two backmost), so that I can test where to put my car by bumping into a 1x2 I've placed in the open slot between the 4x4s, and then set the parking laser to a spot on my dashboard.


Here you can see the 2" clearance between my car hood and the 4x4.


a downward view


a straight down view, from atop the shelf, looking down the front of my car,. You can see the clearance between my bumper and the wall.


Getting ready to PL-400 glue the 3/4" oak plywood sheet (85.5" x 42.5") to the 4x4s. It's being held up by that black 'magic bar'.


Drew the lines for the 1.5" deck screws, and then drove the 108 deck screws. You can see the canadian tire drywall drill bit. It's magnetic, and it automatically pulls the bit from the screw at the correct depth. I used robertson (square head) screws, rather than the philips bit it came with. The bit kept falling out, so every other screw I'd put the bit back in, and then attach another screw. On balance, I'm happy with it, but I assume there's something better out there.


Spray painted the i-beams with a rust primer paint. I ran out of paint, but most of it is covered, and I've been told that it's ok (or at least common) to have a little rust on them.


The rear wall i-beam wood support is up. It's two 2x10's glued and screwed together (making a 4x10), and then 2 six-inch 3/8" lag bolts into a stud. The top is 4.5" from the ceiling, leaving a half inch to get the 4" tall i-beam up there. I've pre-drilled four holes in the top for the i-beam hold down lag bolts.
I've cut the long side wall 2x10's (one shown, far right), including glued and screwed short 2x10 with a 45 degree bevel at the bottom to the upper face. I intentionally cut them too long at this point, so that I could mark them with the laser level four inches lower than the front wall i-beam support, and then cut them to the currect hight, and thus get both front supports exactly level with each other, and exactly 4" shorter than the front wall support, and the top exactly flat because it was cut subsequently.


I didn't take any pictures of the actual mounting of the side posts, which have a single six inch lag bolt at the top, and three 3" construction screws down the face.
I didn't take any pictures of drilling two holes the lower i-beam where the upper i-beam will cross it. I used a high speed steel bit in my variable speed hand drill on slow, with a lot of downward force, and pausing every time it smoked a bit to add some penetrating oil. It was slow drilling, but it made it through.
I also didn't take any pictures of getting the i-beams up there. It was a two person operation. I lifted one end of the front/lower i-beam up into place, and then tied a 'safety rope' to the other end and to a 2.5" lag bolt in the top of the other end, and lifted a bit while someone else kept the safety line taught, and then I changed position to lift it a bit more, until finally it was up.
The upper i-beam we put into place the same sort of way, lifting it a bit and with a safety rope around one end of the upper i-beam and over the already in place lower i-beam, which was now bolted down with 8 lag bolts (four on each end).
Once the upper i-beam was in place but not bolted down, I used a clamp to keep it there, while I start-drilled the holes through the existing holes in the lower i-beam into the upper i-beam so I'd get them in the right spots. Then I took the upper i-beam down to the ground again and actually drilled those merely-started two bolt holes through, and then we put it back up into place. I attached the bolts between the beams, and tightened down the 4 lag bolts at the front wall end 4x10 support.
The hoist hook is smaller than the one in the picture that I ordered it from, so I had to take the trolley apart and put the trolley through the hoist hook and then lift both trolley and hoist up together and re-assemble the trolley on the upper i-beam. But it was easy to do. The hoist chains are covered in oil -- I'll be using gloves with these things forever. The hoist is quite noisy, and while the hook goes up as slow as I was expecting, it is not as fast as I was hoping.



You can see the parking laser.



Here's a close up of two of the twelve 2.5" x 3/8" lag bolts and washers holding the i-beams in place (4 lag bolts per end of i-beam on wood, 3/8" washer on top, 1/2" washer on bottom). I did some chin ups on the lower i-beam, and it was quite solid.


Here's a close up of the bolts connecting the beams. The nuts have plastic in them to keep them from slipping.


I've put up some trim around the outside of the shelf. The top of the trim has a 45 degree angle, ripped with my Ridgid 10 Inch Portable Jobsite Table Saw (with table). The intent is to keep any snow dripping from the snow blower on the wood, and not in the drywall. I'll need to caulk and polyurethane it yet.


Clean up. The garden hose holder (left side) is now one stud closer to the garage door than it was when I started, and probably won't be in the way of my car door any more. I'm thinking of leaving the ladder there, if I can find a hook for it to keep it against the wall.


Open the snow blower box to find the manual



The snow blower is now together. I put in 2 liters of gasoline, mixed with a fuel stabilizer, and started it outside on the driveway. With the choak full on, it chugged badly and emitted toxic puffs of white smoke. But when I turned the choak to 'run' it ran much smoother. I boosted the throttle to full speed, and drove it around my driveway, and spun the auger. Worked fine. Then I parked it under the shelf, and put the car right up to it.



With the snowblower under the shelf, there's enough room to open the upper rear car hatch window, but not the main rear door.


With the snowblower on the shelf, and the car all the way forward, there's enough room to open the main rear car hatch door and then some.


I cut two half-inch eye bolts, for use on the auger end of the snowblower for the lifting chain.


I drilled through the auger housing, and attached the first eye bolt. Again I'm using nuts with plastic in them so they won't undo hopfully when the machine starts vibrating throwing snow. I've used half inch washers on both sides, and the ends of the auger are welded to the sides, and with a lip that the washers grab onto. It seemed a strong part of the auger housing.


Here's all the chains attached. The weak part is probably the two U clamps at the rear side of the lower chains. None of the chains touch anything, such as the starter motor or the exaust or the tires.


Up it goes. It takes about three minutes to get it up there.


Pretty good balance. Better than I was concerned might happen. In this picture I would be standing on this side of the snowblower to hoist it up, but as I got near the top the chains started to get in the way of the chute direction housing (black, near top of snowblower), so I had to move the chains and myself to the far side of the snowblower, and that was clear.




I put up a new hose holder, for the hoses that I use out back in the summertime.


I put up a hook for the ladder. The hook is an 8" angle bracket, that I've bent upwards at the end. I got the idea from a barn door holder. It's mounted into studs with three 3" lag bolts. The bottom of the ladder is supported, so I figure I can safely climb up and down the ladder here. I was thinking of putting a 2x4 horizontally under the next step down (wide step, back, see line on wall) so the ladder wouldn't move sideways when I was on it, but it seems stable. It's odd (unnerving) climbing straight up though.


I've poly filla'd the holes in the wall, and I'm about to retape the corners. I found some tape with metal down the middle which should hold better than the paper tape that was in the garage before. I've been meaning to do this for years, as the corners were full of holes when I moved in.


You can see the tape in the lower corner. At this point I've put up the drywall mud behind the tape, and then put the tape on. Subseqeuntly I put the drywall mud overtop of the tape, and then another piece of tape down to the floor. It's hard to see in the picture, but the bottom 8" of the wall are recessed back about an inch.



The taping of the corners is done. And I've caulked the wood trim around the shelf.


I dug out the broken morter along the entire wall base, from the door on the left to the new 2x10 support pole on the right.


You can see that it's a 2" vertical gap, going back 2" and down further in spots, and I suspect that this is where small insects and garage smells and coolness have been coming into my basement for a few years, through the extremely loose and broken morter here.


Here it's a smaller gap, perhaps half an inch high, but there's a huge volume of space inbehind, perhaps a few cubic feet.


I considered re-parging it with morter, but elected to do the following.
Step 1: fill the tap with Great Stuff expanding foam. If this stuff gets wet it deteriorates, releasing harmful gases into the house, and shrinking.


Some new lumber to make the trim around the bottom. It's 1x5s, ripped to have a 45 degree bevel at the top.


Step 2, use foam backer rod under the new wood trim.


More trim. Yes, they're joined at 45 degrees too.


Oh, by the way, before the trim goes on, I cut the Great Stuff foam flush with the wall using a hack saw blade.


The rest of the trim up. I've sealed the bottom and joins with GE Silicone II.


The shelves up. I used 3" #10 screws, five per 4' shelf support bar. I put up 11 vertical shelf supports, so if I ever want to change the shelf arrangement, such as a true all around shelf, I can do so easily at a later date. The right shelves are 1' deep, the back shelves are 8" deep, and the left shelves are 19" deep. The right and back shelves were sold as shelves the correct width, and trimed for length. The left shelf was sold as 2'x4' wood, and trimed for length and width. All shelves came with a white finished top and bottom.


Painted the trim white, both the trim on the ground and the trim on the main shelf.
I also painted the main shelf white, and then three coats of exterior polyurethane on the shelf and the shelf trim. I've never polyerethaned over paint before, and in several spots it turned green. The last time I polyerethaned another project in the garage I could smell it clearly in the basement, but today there's no smell of polyerethane in the basement so I guess all that wall sealing worked.
About a quarter of the way done painting everything white, it occured to me that I should have stained all this wood mahogony -- it would have looked Great!


The shelves are loaded with everything that was there before, except the paint and the tarp, and it now has room for a snowblower, and potentially a new 5000W generator.


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Before Photos and Plans

Here's a photo of my small one car garage September 29 2009.
I park the nose of my car under the shelf, with the bumper over the lawn mower. There's enough room to get out of the car, and walk around the car on the drivers side and the trunk.


I want to put an "Ariens Deluxe Platinum 30 Snow-Thro" snowblower on a shelf over the hood of my car.
It weighs 250 pounds, plus another 6 pounds of fuel, plus the weight of the trolley and hoist and chains -- I figure about 300 pounds.


I've looked into 14' to 15'5" long x 36" inch wide steel ramps, and building my own ramps out of wood, fork lift, scissor lift, rotating crane, no shelf, and various elevator designs.

But my current favorite, from a no-slip/no-one-under-it safety and ease-of-use point of view is a hoist.
For starters, I'd remove the existing shelf, and build a new stronger shelf such that the top is 55" off the ground, and the bottom is 50" off the ground, using 4x4's and 3/4" plywood (pl premium glued the plywood to the 4x4's and deck screws). The shelf will end up being 82" wide by 42.5" deep. I'll probably run 2x8's under it for it to sit on (left, right, and back), 4" sprial nailed into the 2x4's in the wall, and then 2x4's to the floor (not shown).

Then the idea is to put two 2x8's up each wall (giving a 3" lip on each end for the i-beams to sit on). An alternative is a 4x4 up the wall. Another alternative is to run a single 2x8 up the wall, and then at the top 2' sister another 2x8 to give a 3" lip for the i-beam.

Then a 112" steel i-beam ("A") between them from wall to wall, and then another 105" steel i-beam ("B") on top of that running from the first i-beam to the far wall. I'd attach little wood blocks, shaped to go over the lower flange to the i-beam's web, so that the i-beam couldn't move even in an earthquake. The two i-beams would be bolted together by drilling a hole through the lower flange of the upper beam, and through the upper flange of the lower beam.
I have two quotes for beams (Plus $80 delivery and taxes):


On the lower flange of the upper/front-back i-beam ("B"), I'd hang a "CM Universal Wide Flange Trolley" (basically a four wheeled skateboard with a dangling hook point), rated at 1/2 ton. The hook is 4" lower than the flange. Hmm, I just noticed that this only goes down to 2.5" wide flanges, so I guess I'll have to use the 4" beam, even though every vertical inch counts -- although 2 5/16 is pretty close to 2 8/16. ($201)


And under the trolley, I'd hang a "WESCO Economy Hand Hoist", rated at 1000 pounds. All the way up, it takes up another 9.5" of vertical space. ($205)


Which would look a little like this


I'd attach four chains -- one to each axel, and two to the auger housing on eye bolts -- to the lower hook of the hoist. I'd hoist it up to the shelf height, and then use the trolley to push it back over the shelf, and lower it onto the shelf. It should go up level, due to this sort of chain arrangement (except it will be attached to the snowblower, rather than a board).