I had too many boats (is that an oxymoron?) and too little space to store them in my garage up north. My solution for storing the boats after the paddling season was over was to hang them from the ceiling, using a commercially available pulley system. These pulley systems are available from Harkin and others (go to http://www.outdoorplay.com/ for information).
Unlike my southern garage, my northern garage had high ten-foot ceilings. This allowed me to hoist the boats and store them safely above our cars during the winter when we wanted the cars inside. In the milder months, the boats sat on stands on the floor in “my side” of the garage and my car lived outside.
I found that this system worked very well. The various pulley systems assume that there will be exposed studs to bolt the hanging brackets to. My garage was finished with no studs exposed. Besides, I needed to hang the boats across (perpendicular to) the ceiling studs to avoid a conflict with the raised garage door. To do this I purchased three 8-foot two-by-fours. I cut a 45-degree
angle in each end for cosmetic reasons and lag bolted each two-by-four to the ceiling using four countersunk lag bolts. I then thru-bolted two hanging brackets to each two-by-four and tied off the lifting cord to a cleat on the wall. As a final precaution, I installed eyebolts near the bow and stern ends of the two-by-fours and fastened a looped piece of webbing around the hulls and to the eyebolts. Then if the locking mechanism on the lift should fail for any reason, the boat could not come down and both the boats and our cars below would be protected.
My system was not designed to raise and lower boats on a regular basis. It was meant as a way to store them when the garage floor was needed for other things. It worked well for me for many years until our move to Florida. Here with a lower garage ceiling I am using a Talic Kayak Condo system (
click here to review that report).