My garage is 4M x 7M and has a flat roof. The 200mm deep joists are 400mm apart and provide a good amount of storage for anything that's vaguely long and thin.

The flat roof is past its sell by date and so I'm about to change it to a double pitched roof with a 1 metre high apex. There's not a lot you can do with 1 metre of space... even boarding it and crawing around could be awkward - so I'm on the hunt for clever storage ideas. At the moment my mind's got as far as fitting some pulleys and hoisting the bikes up out of the way.

Structurally I'm comfortable messing around, so taking the odd joist out or fitting raised collars in places is fine - it's the the ideas I'm wondering about - whether I'm missing a trick somewhere.

Cheers

Gary

[Edited on 9/10/13 by garyo]

1m is quite a bit more height, add a ramp or lift in the centre.



[Edited on 9/10/13 by mark chandler]

Hinge some ceiling panels with plywood fixed vertically (to the ceiling panel) so it doesn't all come tumbling down when opening. Restrict the panels to about 45 degrees.

Why not increase the ridge line further? If you want to retain a certain pitch for aesthetics, is it possible to extend the eaves projection, this will lift the ridge subtly.

I would look at it another way.

What do have that you want to store away. Or what would you like to buy but dont have the space for? ?

Designing the use of the new space could be fun and innovative. If you design it right then it does not even have to work first time! !

What about a pitched roof at 1.5m and then a dorma on one side then board it up stairs and your have tons of storage then :-)

I bought an old window on eBay for £30 which was 2000mm x 1100mm

Did the Job for my old house.

Upstairs in the garage meant I have nothing but tools n kit downstairs plus I had a den to hide in should the aliens come.....

Cheers guys - I like the idea of the hinged panels - I'll have a think about that.

The 1M ridge height is fairly arbitrary, but mostly to keep it below the planning radar. For context, the garage is 20 metres from the house at the bottom of the garden. Neighbours either side have built various garages and structures over the years, some with a ridge height at 4 metres+. The recent tightening of permitted development means that due to my garage being 1m from my side and rear boundary, I'm limited to a max height of 2.5M. The wall plate on the garage is already 2.2 so I'm pushing my luck at 3.2 total height.

Neighbours are friendly, and it'll still be one of the smaller structures, so I'm tempted to push it up to 4M, and the dormer is a tempting concept too.

I suppose could just go for it at 4M and then see if I get in to strife and construct the roof with the ability lower the ridge height at a later date by doing things like bolting the rafters in to the joists to form a hinge, rather than skew nailing (I'm going to ply/felt the roof I think so there won't be too much weight in it).

In terms of what I need to store - I'm a bit of a hoarder so that when I need to fabricate something I don't need to buy too much, so the current garage has a lot of racking on both sides that house around 30 of those plastic storage boxes that are 12" x 12" x 18". Getting the bikes out of the way would be a bonus too.

On the outside I'm going to create eaves overhangs so that I create around 1M of dry non-secure space either side of the garage for the cheaper bikes, bits of scrap metal/wood, etc

[Edited on 10/10/13 by garyo]

[Edited on 10/10/13 by garyo]