The beauty of that system is that he drives his car under and drop it right on top with the foam pads in place.

Personally, I would have placed the ropes right under the top pulleys using some sort of stretcher.

With the angles that it has, it's harder to lift as it gets closer to the top. At some point, it gets too hard to lift it anymore without breaking the ropes.

The tension in the rope is a function of the angle between the rope and the ceiling. The tension on the rope is equal to the half the weight of the kayak divided by the sine of the angle so for a simple 60 lb kayak, you are looking at 60lbs of tension on each rope when you are up to 30 degrees. Your cleat on the wall is holding 120 lbs to suspend a 60lb kayak.

Try to bring it up to 15 degrees and you have 116 lbs per rope.

Keep the pulleys close to the lift points.

Brilliant

Here is a sketch of my setup. I have a Mad River Canoe Synergy 12 kayak. About 62 lbs.

The brown rectangle at the top is just a 2x4 I screwed to the rafters in the garage so I could distribute the weight

The green circles are pulleys.

The dark black vertical straps on the kayak are made out of webbing with D rings at the end. I also have a D ring in the bottom of the front strap and I'll explain that one later.

The blue lines is my one parachord rope.

Four lines holding it so it's about 16 lbs on the working end. if I tie it to a wall, the cleat will only hold 16 lbs.

I actually tie it to the D ring at the bottom fo the front strap so five lines are holding the weight. About 13 lbs per line. 13 lbs of tension on the rope.

The more pulleys the less the weight per line

62lbs/5 lines = 12.4lbs per line

Ricardo, would you care to post some pics of your set up, I'm curious about your webbing. Also what how the pulley are set in play, the two attached to the 2x4 and the two attached to the webbing.

What do you do for a living?

+1. Nice job...must be some kind of engineer?...I'd have to write a program to figger all that out...

Here is a picture of the complete setup with the yak all the way up. Note that I have two kayaks hanging from the same set of 2x4s.
Once hoisted, I can use them to store paddles, PFDs, straps, foam pads, fish finder battery, etc. Everything is in one place. Also note that there is a strap between the two webbing straps. That strap is there to keep the belts at the same spacing when I'm setting them up.



Here is a photo of the top left pulley attached to the 2x4. You can also see in more detail the type of parachord I use.


A detail of the top right side. Note the angle of the right side pulley. I pull towards the front of my garage. The important part is the spacing of the two pulleys because the bottom one will fit between the these two.


And here is a photo of the webbing with the D buckles. Note the nylon buckle on the right side. It allows for some adjustment for different size kayaks.



I mentioned how I tie the rope to the kayak itself. Here is a detail of how I do so. It keeps me from having to run the rope to a wall..


The most time consuming part is making the nylon webbing straps and it helps to have a sewing machine

The pulleys at the top are just hanging from eyelets screwed to the 2x4s. Find the eyelets with the coarse threading.

The nylon buckle is probably the weakest link in the whole system but it's plenty strong for the load it has to bear.

With everything loaded on top of the kayak, the rope is holding less than 20 lbs of tension. The key is the angle of the ropes. Straight up and down lines are good. Add any angles and you are multiplying the load very fast.

I'm an electrical engineer.

Awesome pics thanks for going out of your way to chime in, by far between the vid I posted and your set up this is the easiest "ceiling hung installs".

How long have you been storing your yak like that, more particular [censored] pit side up?"

There seems to be debate that you'll get deformation when hanging them up vs [censored] pit side down.

If I'm not mistaken, my owners manual says to store it as you have yours, [censored] pit side up.

Say, on a side note, do you see any long term issues with branching off an old light fixture, wire nutting it in the ceiling box and sheet rocking over it. How much code is involved when doing home reno work? Should inspectors be involved?

I've got a little bathroom job going on that is preventing me from getting on the water...

EDIT: C.O.C.K. got censored, delicate forums here I see. Ummm, seat side up should I say, lol.

I've been storing both kayaks like that for almost three years now.

The second kayak is a Pelican 129 tandem. With all the bad rep that they have, it hasn't deformed in a couple of summers inside my garage.

For me, it makes more sense to hang them righside up. I can store everything else inside.

I also spaced the straps to distribute the weight fairly evenly.

I've seen installs that use racks to cradle the kayak but I didn't see any need for that.

There is no deformation of the kayaks as I raise them.


On the topic of electrical wiring, just make sure to stay within your breaker limits and you are good. No inspector just to add another light out of the old one.

Not trying to give you grief, but had you spelled the word correctly, it wouldn't have been a problem I don't think. The correct spelling is one word not two. Unless the two word spelling was intentionally done to be funny. Either way, it was still funny to me

Nope, spelled it wrong in that case.

I use a single pulley system that hunters use to hang deer and elk. You can buy the whole thing for about $18.00, then a couple of straps to go round the Yak, a couple of carabiners, and you are set to go. Mount the pulley system in the roof of your garage. I have four of them all hanging (out of the way) in the roof of my garage, and it works like a charm. If you want an easy mount for a fish finder, use a small suction cup and a strong piece of wire. Attach the wire to the suction cup and transducer, then you can hang it over the side of your Yak quite simply. A 2" suction cup is all you need - costs about a buck.

@ Ricardo... Or anyone else w/ a solution to the problem.

I've got my pulley set up in place, I'm only using 4 pulleys, everything looks pretty much the same as the pics posted by Ricardo. The difference is one less pulley. The missing pull is the 1st pulley the pull line goes through, I'm running the line through ceiling hook or eye hook.

When I lift, the yak doesn't go up parallel to the floor. The side of the yak closest to the pull line goes up 1st. If you were continue to pull, that side of the yak goes complete to ceiling, leaving the yak at a 45 deg angle.

None of this is a big deal, I give it 2 pulls and then release one hand from the pull line and push up on the low end of the yak and with no pressure at all the yak levels out.

Same with going down, the pull side drops and you have to hold the bow up for the stern to level out.

Positive points, the pulley system works great, aside from not going up straight, it's takes virtually no effort to get it to lift and no effort to get it down, very little resistance on your grip to get it to glide smoothly down to my saw horses.

I've tried adjusting the straps a foot in both directions but that doesn't help, I've got both sides going pretty much plumb while still leaving a 2-3" gap for the pulley's on the bottom to fit in between when the yak is pulled to the high position.

What I'm guessing the problem is is the rope itself, I'm thinking that it's the stretch of the nylon rope.

Way to long winded for something so simple, sorry for the novel.

Not much you can do about the yak going up unevenly. It's friction.

In a perfect world there would be no friction and all pulleys would spin freely but that's not the case in mine either.

I just stop every once in a while and level it.

Aight cool, I'll take a pic or 3 and post them when I get a chance, if you see something that I could do better let me know.