Martin w
Ultra Member
My bad, I was thinking of “That Guy”. Sorry it’s been a long week. And it’s Monday!I have an aviation background?news to me lol
My bad, I was thinking of “That Guy”. Sorry it’s been a long week. And it’s Monday!I have an aviation background?news to me lol
likely the weakest part of this is the lag screws into the 2x6. A 3" screw will go into the wood about 2 1/2" - and because it is cross grain, that's all the wood that will ever carry any load. And because it has been pierced by the screws themselves, it will be even weaker. Two lag screws on each in close proximity means that the loads from them can't be independently resisted by the wood - effectively the pair of screws has the capacity of a single screw
the good news is that wood framing usually fails in a progressive ductile way - no sudden snapping - with lots of cracking and popping noises. So there should be warning. even the drywall will help somewhat
Not that you can do anything about it now, but if you were doing it again, I would suggest deeper lag screws. Carriage bolts would be better, but there is probably no access from the top. And blocking between the 2x6 to prevent lateral tortional buckling. And of course, if there were some way to put the lag screws farther apart on each joist.
We have a variety of Princess Auto hoists at work, all with extended remote cables (the lowest ceilings are 16’, the highest is 26’). I wrote the capacity (single cable and doubled) on the remote, so anyone using it can check.After you have it in place.
Put a LARGE decal on it that states the ‘safe load’ capacity of the weakest link in the hoist.
Factor of Safety = 4 or more.
(Anchor lags, lifting hooks, etc)
Lifting Equipment should be adequately Engineered for the application.
Especially if you are lifting items near human access and work areas.
The pull out strength per lag should be ~400-500lbs per the tables I'm seeing, so my limitation is more likely the 2x6's yes.
I'm sure it'll be fine if you use it within reason. Do not side load that at all, as you'll risk spreading the strut. I would love to have something similar in my shop for those awkward things that are just hard to lift and manipulate single handedly. A few of the next couple projects for me are going to be lifting device related, as I'm not getting younger, and the projects seem to keep getting bigger. Of course I said that last year, but other stuff just keeps wiggling it's way into the queue ahead of them. Damn line jumpers.....
Looking at that, the only thing I'd possibly add, which is just me overbuilding/overkilling it, would be some triangular gussets to the mounting plates to keep the strut from potentially spreading if side loaded. Needed? probably not. Worth taking the whole thing down to do it? Probably not either.
I almost never give specific advice on lifting systems. It's too easy to get into professional trouble when/if something goes wrong. But at the same time I don't want to stand by and let someone hurt themselves needlessly.
That's why I'm NOT going to help you with the specifics of your design. But I will provide you with a few things to think about.
The tables you have referenced are usually not derated for safety factor. In other words, they list the normal pullout strength of a lag bolt whose entire length is in the center 1/3 of the 1-3/4 width of a perfect (no knots or splits) in a kiln dried joist of the specified wood. It is up to the table user to derate the strength of the completed system for the usual 2x or 3x safety factor for the weakest link.
A usual design approach would never share loads as per your assumption. If a single concentrated load can happen, then that becomes the design objective. Keep in mind that despite the assumption that the joists don't move, they do. Not a little, but a lot. (Everything is rubber.) The pullout strength is reached when the lag bolt slips a small portion of the thread pitch - say 1/32nd of an inch for a 7 tpi bolt. So the joist doesn't need to move much to allow the load to concentrate the failure into just one bolt in one joist. You should not assume a shared load unless the rest of your system is designed to guarantee a shared load.
As stated above, you should always apply a safety factor to the final design. I might use a safety factor of 3 for a system like yours. In other words, derate a calculated worst case load capacity of 600 pounds at the weakest link to 200 pounds.
Will it carry more? Of course it will. But it is not generally considered safe to do so.
If you can provide more detailed drawings, the engineers on here can probably provide additional advice on ways to improve it without getting themselves into trouble.
These are the posts that always happen on overhead stuff like this![]()
Yup. But for good reason. No way the rest of us can know everything you know.
I won't (but could) quibble with almost every assumption you made. Load sharing is almost never as simple or obvious as it looks. Your analysis is not transparent to the rest of us either for the same reason (don't know what you know).
But it sounds like you are happy with it and that's probably about all we can hope for.
Somebody earlier said that noises are your friend when it comes to structures - I'll second that. Pay close attention to them.
Good luck!
My wife joked about doing her circus arts stuff from it, I said not a chance lol
Now wait a minute. I think you are being a bit hasty there..... If my wife volunteered to do some circus acrobatic positions on anything, I wouldn't care if it were made out of sawdust! I'd be all over that!
LoL so that's where you draw the line on structural support? If wife is involved, doesn't matter if it will fail ... because ... maybe it will ... ? lol
Hence the tape measure? Take a walk on the wild side...If my girl wants to use an uncertified piece of artistic hardware to help her get into some kinky position, I'm game!
You might want to consider a spotter.If my girl wants to use an uncertified piece of artistic hardware to help her get into some kinky position, I'm game!
What, dying or sex ?sex kills. Happens a lot.
You know the old fantasy: Shot by a jealous husband at 90.What, dying or sex ?