Garage shelving

[NiceCupOfTea]

Need to put up a few more shelves in the garage & just want to get some thoughts.

Plans are to use those metal uprights with slots so I can put a couple of shelves on each wall and vary the height if necessary.

On one wall I want shelves 80cm wide, on the other wall, 100cm wide.

2 shelves on each wall.

Each shelf 36cm deep

Each bracket coming out from a metal upright will have a 2x1 batten screwed to it, and then screwed to that I was going to use MDF for the shelf, probably 15mm.

Should that be OK for medium duty garage shelves? I'm not going to be hanging elephants from them, but at the same time I don't want them falling off the wall with a few tools stacked up there...

[V10Mike]

15mm MDF will sag under any significant weight, unless you have intermediate supports. Best material is plywood, 18mm should be enough, or timber boards will workif they are about 25mm thick.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Bearing in mind that even on the widest shelf (100cm) there will be two supports about 30cm in from each end, leaving 40cm in the middle - it will still sag?

Edit: Plus, plywood is bloody expensive!

[Blakeatron]

300mm from each end is too much - I would not go more than 150mm (ideally more like 100mm)

For the sake of 2 extra rails and a few brackets it would be worth it.

Then you could go with 15mm Mdf - also consider MR Mdf(moisture resistant) for the garage as it wont suck up the mositure, thats if you have a damp one of course!

[V10Mike]

If you keep the load centred over the supports, you might get away with it, but I'd still use 18mm mdf.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

no option to use a shelving unit ?
costco do a great heavy duty one and its only about £40 5 shelf about 1.2 meters wide 61cm deep 2.13 meters tall very heavy duty each shelf can take 1000lbs they say
oh and you can use it in 2 bits as like a work area

its basically this stuff
http://www.tennsco.com/pdf/sturdstor.pdf

[NiceCupOfTea]

Naah, the shelves are above the workbench.

I've decided to build the shelves out of 2x1. It's not gone well though, got planed instead of rough so that was a waste of money and had an argument with B&Q because their shelving brackets are double the price of the ones on their website, meaning I have to order them online when I had the damn things in my hand!!

[mgtony]

What do you mean by "making the shelves out of 2x1" ? Are you thinking of gluing them together to bake a board?

Check screwfix's prices for brackets, normally cheaper than B&Q.

http://www.screwfix.com/search.do;jsessionid=m1d1T...

Are you still going for the metal slotted shelving system?

[NiceCupOfTea]

No, screw them to be battens with a gap inbetween, park bench style

Will have a look at scerwfix, cheers.

[mgtony]

I've got those type of shelves in an old airing cupboard, everytime I put a spray can or something similar on them, they either fall forward or backwards! Go for a solid shelf, a piece of 2x1 screwed length ways accross the bottom of a 12mm/15mm shelf will stiffen it up.
Cheap new or used kitchen cabinets can also look neat and tidy.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Bought the wood now. Will probably just stick a layer of cardboard over it to stop stuff falling through the gaps.