Secure bike storage for small communal area.

Applespider

Can anyone help with ideas for secure bike storage in a small communal hallway? We own the freehold and I need a better solution than just rolling them into the space next to the stairs and chaining them to the wooden stair railing.

To get it paid for by the communal fund, it needs to provide at least one space for each flat (4) although I'm about to need 2. There are 3 bikes currently, only one of which moves regularly (mine), but whatever we come up with needs to assume that they might all be used regularly.

I can see two options...
Outdoor unit - it would have to go into the fairly open front garden in London so I'm not entirely convinced how secure this would be. Or how big it would need to be to be able to lock everyone's bike individually and still get them out.

Indoors in the communal hallway
The problem here is space. The only suitable space is next to the stairs; it's a more or less rectangular space - a metre wide, 2.2m of wall lengthwise on one side but I've only got 1.65m of height before the stairs start sloping upwards. This also means that a ceiling solution probably wouldn't work either.

The only thing I can think of currently is to get a wall mounted stand (or two smaller ones at different heights) that can hold two bikes at each level which has some way of locking the bikes to the frame. Since I can't see how the owner of the back bike would be able to get it off while leaving the front bike secure, there would have to be an element of trust with the lock being shared by two users. I've seen the racks that you can hang bikes off by the front wheel but can't quite see how you'd be able to lock that effectively manouevre in what's quite a narrow space.

Any great ideas?

davis

Applespider wrote:

I need a better solution than just rolling them into the space next to the stairs and chaining them to the wooden stair railing.

Why?

That's not sarcasm - what's wrong with what you do now?

The only thing I can think of is storing the bikes flat (stacked) in some sort of shelving. It'd be doable, but a hideous pain in the posterior.

I'm not too sure I understand the available space from your description though. Maybe modelling the space in Google Sketchup will give you a better clue about what could fit where -- it's got many, many bike models available, too.

Applespider

It's not that secure unfortunately and there's only room to get one bike in and out. As soon as person 2 wants a bike out, it's tricky. And my second bike just won't fit in....

Thanks for the tip on Google Sketch though - I'll have a look and see if I can figure something out.

MichaelW

Is the ceilling high enough to hang bikes on pulleys.

wgwarburton

Hi,
BikeAway lockers out front:

http://www.bikeaway.com/index.htm

You could have a row of four against a wall or put them back to back as an island. Security is pretty good.

Space needed:

SPACE-SAVING
The small footprint means 6 BikeAway's fit into just one standard car parking space with generous access for the cyclists.

COMPACT
BikeAway Locker is 68cm wide, 109cm deep, and 190-200cm high

So a four-locker island would be 2m18 by 1m36.

Dunno what your budget is, though...

Cheers,
W.
PS no connection to the company, I rent one from my local council at the nearest Railway Station to home.