Buying cheap garden sheds to store your families bicycles in may seem like a great cost effective way of protecting your families bikes from the weather, preventing them from being stolen and freeing up some space in your sheds and garages. But, before you part with your cash just take a couple of minutes to read through this article as the money your about to spend on storage for your families bicycles may be better spend on a solution that costs a little bit more. Here are three reasons why cheap sheds are a false economy:
Regular Treatment
The biggest problem with cheap sheds is the materials that they are made from, this was dealt with in the cheap garden sheds post, but to summarise cheap sheds are made from cheap materials. Cheap materials tend to be knotty soft wood which need regular treatment to prevent it from rotting. Wood preservative is not cheap and if you have to do this every year then the costs soon add up.
Replacement Shed
Having any item that is made from a material that rots means that you are eventually going to have to replace that item, and if you have to buy a shed every five years or so that can add up to be significant. This is why plastic sheds can work out to be much better value than cheap sheds that are made from timber. Rubbermaid sheds and Suncast Sheds both make economy plastic sheds that would rival the cost of cheap storage sheds.
Locks for Bicycles
The main area of false economy of using cheap sheds for bicycle storage perhaps comes in the fact that they are not very secure. If you garden is not enclosed then you bikes are at risk a cheap shed made from cheap timber will warp, gaps will open up, knots will fall out and they can be very easily broken in to. Therefore to prevent your bikes from being stolen you would be well advised to lock your bikes up – inside. Now you don’t necessarily need a lock for each bike but even one bike lock can work out expensive and you would have been better off investing that money in a bike storage shed that was secure. The very fact that you may need to lock your bike up inside a cheap shed is also a great inconvenience. If each time you take your bike out you need to unlock it.
To summarise, cheap sheds are not a great solution for storing bicycles and they really would be best avoided. If you can’s afford a plastic shed or better quality bicycle storage solution I would advise you to save up a little longer until you can, because it really would save you money in the long run.