Here is how I installed a ceiling mounted Ladder Hoist in the garage to get it out of the way and gain floor space when not in use. I have 2 aluminum extension ladders. I have a 20ft. and a 30ft. The 20ft ladder is relatively light and easy to handle. I have it tied to the ceiling between the 2 garage doors. The 30ft. aluminum extension ladder is much heavier and longer, thus difficult to maneuver so I decided to install a Ladder Hoist.
The garage ceiling area over my vehicle next to my Kayak Hoist in the garage was perfect for this project. I bought the Racor LDL-1B Ladder Lift because of its smart design and high customer ratings.
Now, my ceiling joists run left to right from the perspective of this photograph. That also presented a bit of a problem since many of these systems have mounting brackets designed to be mounted in line with a joist. Well, that’s not what I wanted to do. Fortunately, I simply turned the pulley assembly mounting brackets 90 degrees in line with a joist and it works perfectly.
Here’s an image of the ladder lift mounting bracket installed on the ceiling towards the garage door header wall. I used my Precision Stud Finder to find the exact location of the ceiling joists to screw the brackets right in the middle of the 2″ x 10″s and be safe.
I then pre-drilled the pilot holes and the fastened the ladder lift mounting bracket to the ceiling using the required lag bolts. Notice the bracket isn’t mounted against the wall. This is because the J bracket will hold the last step on the ladder and you must leave enough clearance for the remaining portion of the latter to clear the wall.
The pulley bracket is are mounted using the provided bolts and lock nuts. Next, I tied the line ends to the pulley brackets, as instructed, and looped the line through the pulley system and the braking mechanism.
Here’s what it looked like after I was finished looping in the ladder lift line. Notice the line hanging off the pulley bracket, which actually hold 2 of the 4 pulleys in the system. This line is used to lift and lower the ladder.
After testing the Ladder Lift a couple of times, I mounted the nice pulley housing as shown on the first image of this blog.
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