Light Duty Boltless Shelving For Residential Purposes – What You Need To Know

“Most definitely I would recommend this type of light duty boltless shelving for any residential storage issue,” said Cameron Canfield, Sales Rep for BuyMetalShelving.com.  “It is the strongest and it is one of the most economical types of shelving out there and is perfect for storing things if you have say, an unfinished basement it is perfect because you can get stuff up off of the floor and store things vertically and not horizontally.”

Home storage.  It’s a problem that can be solved with a light duty boltless shelving option.  And odds are you’re going to love what you read about it and how you may be tricked by some of the options you find in a home improvement store…

“Light duty boltless shelving is what is called a single rivet shelving, and what it does is the shelf is not nearly as thick so it can only handle about 350 lbs on a 3’ shelf,” said Canfield.  “Now if you were to get a double rivet racking design in the same 3’ span, it could hold up to 900  lbs without a center beam support.  So for most residential applications that double rivet design is too much, because who is going to put 900 pounds on a shelf when you are storing boxes, food storage, photo albums and books in your home.”

Face it, most people want LOTS of shelves and since it is a residential application the weight capacity that someone in a home would need is far, far less than what some company would need, making the single rivet design more attractive for home use.

Easily put together by hand, the single rivet slips into a pre-made teardrop slot on the uprights and it holds a lot more weight than you may think!

“Light duty boltless shelving is usually perfect for most residential applications because you can get 350 lbs on a 3’ shelf or 250 lbs per shelf on a 4’ shelf.  The thing that is very attractive about this type of shelving is that it is friendlier for storing smaller type items because you can get more space in the single rivet design than the double rivet design,” states Canfield.  “Each shelf only has a height of 1 and 21/32nds and the actually wood decking sits down inside the beam which is nice too because the double rivet shelving is 2 ¾ inches and the 5/8ths inch wood decking sits on top of that so you lose quite a bit of profile with each shelf.”

Using a single rivet design means more shelf in the limited space you have.

“I actually have some myself in a garage area where I store a lot of bike parts and the pesticides and fertilizers that I use in my yard during the summer, so any kind of motor parts, oil, painting materials are also stored on one of these lighter duty boltless shelving units,” shares Canfield.  “This type of shelving is also common in a food storage area just because it is a very versatile and very economical type of shelving that you can put some serious weight on and not fear it folding like some of the China stock you see at home improvement stores.”

So what is that ‘China stock’ that we hear about?

“It’s kind of an ‘all-in-one-box’ type deal,” laughs Canfield.  “Usually the type you find in a Home Depot or Lowes just has really thin particle board that goes onto the thin metal framework and these companies in China just throw it into one box to be able to ship them anywhere they want them to go and a lot of times you won’t have the size options that you do with a company like ours.”

All in one box is most accurate.  You see what most call ‘China stock’ are usually just a cookie cutter application where customers are probably getting a four foot post and it is spliced in the middle instead of getting a solid seven or eight foot post.  This is so manufacturers can get it all into one box, onto the Home Depot shelves ready for a customer to load it conveniently into their shopping cart and vehicle.

“With us you can order a solid, un-spliced seven foot or eight foot post and have that strength without compromising as the China stock stuff does just because it has to fit into a certain box and into the shopping carts and we can still ship it to your home,” said Canfield.  “That China stock you usually find in home improvement stores is also a thinner gauge metal and that type of stuff just isn’t as high a quality of product as what we sell here at BuyMetalShelving.com.”  (seen in the single rivet design closeup below)

“The lighter duty boltless shelving that we sell here are perfect for also storing those huge injection molded plastic tubs they sell in home improvement stores like Rubbermaid where you can fill up one of these tubs and then slide it onto our shelves and that makes home storage so much easier in that kind of situation as well.

Look for shelving that is still a heavy duty industrial type shelving.  When you go to a home improvement store like Home Depot you get a product like a China-stock product shelf, odds are it may look like pretty good stuff, but ask around.

“And on those China-made ‘all in a box’ stuff shelving, you will probably only fit 100 pounds on it instead of like a 350 pound capacity like the stuff we sell,” adds Canfield.

“It’s not even that, but you have a warranty and a guarantee from us for your overall satisfaction and we can get you taken care of, so combine that with the higher quality shelving we sell, often times to industrial companies, than you would from Lowes or a Home Depot,” said Canfield.

So if you are looking to store camping gear, food storage, or you want to have a light duty boltless shelving option for all the boxes, bins or other stuff you store in your garage and basement, then using a single rivet boltless shelving design will not only hold an amazing amount of weight, but it will come in many, many more options than what a Lowes or Home Depot can offer to you in the ‘cheaper’ all-in-a-box China stock you normally see.