Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Bike Security Solutions



From past blogs its probably become apparent that the bikes in my family have successfully bred over the past few years. As a result between the family we now have a total of 6 bikes stored in what is essentially an over sized garden shed. I've been promising myself for some considerable time that I will 'do the sensible thing' and invest a small proportion of the value of the bikes on a decent security solution. My sentiment was further encouraged by the fact that I've been unable to find a household contents insurance company who don't hang up when I tell them that the bikes are stored in a shed! Apparently 40% of all bike thefts are from garden sheds.......

Having justified it to myself, I needed to find a suitable product. A few hours of intense google searching, product reviews and general price comparisons resulted in a short list headed by http://www.torc-anchors.com/

I decided to use a 'Ground Anchor'...resin bonded into the slab and concrete sub-base of my shed and 13mm heavy duty chain secured with a Squire padlock.



Prior to purchase I gave torc-anchor.com a call and spoke with their Technical Director Stephen Briggs. He gave me some great advise on chain/lock configuration to ensure that I had a manageable solution. He suggested two smaller chains as an alternative to one long chain (the chains are very heavy!) and gave me some precise directions on how to resin bond the ground anchor into a concrete slab and also the concrete sub-base that acts as the shed base. This essentially involved purchasing a higher volume of resin from screwfix to ensure that any cavity between the concrete slab and concrete base was also filled with resin thus ensuring that the ground anchor bolts were successfully bonded throughout the whole of the concrete base structure.


Including floor preparation, hole drilling and bonding the installation probably took me around 2 hours.....Here are a few pictures of the finished installation. I'm pleased with the results and satisfied that any would be thief will be confronted with a serious challenge......hopefully enough to make them look elsewhere for easier pickings..............






Finally, the product and service from torq-anchors comes highly recommended!