Ceiling Mounts
Browse used ceiling mounts for sale from riders across the UK. Ceiling storage lifts a bike clear of the floor on a pulley hoist, a pair of hooks or a rack fixed up through the plasterboard into the joists, which in most UK homes sit at 400mm centres. It suits garages and outbuildings where the walls are already taken by shelving, and bikes that come down once a month rather than every day.
How does a bike ceiling hoist work?
The common design is a rope and pulley lift with a 4:1 mechanical advantage, running from two hooks that sit under the handlebars and the saddle, up to two pulley blocks screwed into a joist, with a cam cleat at the wall to lock the rope off. Simpler options are a pair of coated hooks the bike hangs from by its wheels, or a ladder-style rack that takes several bikes side by side above a car. Most single-bike hoists are rated somewhere around 20kg, and that is the number to check before anything else.
Ceiling mount or wall mount?
Ceiling storage costs you headroom rather than floor area, so it wants 2.4m or more to play with and suits a bike that comes down occasionally. Anything ridden daily is far quicker on and off a wall mount, and a bike you are constantly working on may be better on a floor stand that needs no fixings and no drilling at all.
What should I check on a used ceiling hoist?
Run the whole length of the rope through your hands: fraying, glazing where it has run over a worn sheave, and stiffness from damp are all reasons to replace it before the first lift. Check the pulley sheaves spin freely and are not cracked around the axle, that the cam cleat teeth still bite into the rope, and that the vinyl or rubber coating on the hooks has not perished and split down to bare metal. Fixings are the part most often lost in a house move, and a hoist without its lag screws is half a product, since substituting whatever is in the shed is how ceilings fail.
Will a ceiling mount hold an e-bike?
A 22 to 27kg e-bike is over the rating of most single-bike hoists, and head height is not where you want to discover that. Even where the load is within spec, the fixing has to reach structural timber rather than plasterboard, so the position of the joist decides where the bike goes. A garage with an unfinished ceiling is the easy case, because you can see exactly what you are screwing into.
What is a used ceiling mount worth?
New prices are low enough that a used hoist only makes sense complete, with hooks, rope and fixings, and close enough to collect without a long drive. Steel ladder racks and multi-bike overhead systems are the ones worth travelling for. Buy new if the rope looks tired or the fixings are missing, since both are load-bearing and the saving disappears the moment you replace them properly.