Storing bikes on balcony

Invertigo · 10 Jul 2020 at 10:47

So, as the title I'm wanting to get back into mountain biking now that I have a car I can fit bikes into again, however I'm also living in a flat these days.

Now it's quite an old building, so the balcony is a concrete slab with full brick walls to 2 sides and 2 half height walls to the other, so the placement of the bike should likely never get rained on (save for any drops carried inward by winds) but my consideration is more is it worth buying a cover to throw over it, and also ideas for securing the bike. I was considering buying a masonry anchor and drilling it into the wall along with a decent chain?

ik9000 · 10 Jul 2020 at 10:55

if it's prviate balcony why do you need to anchor it? If you drill in you'll probably be in breach of your lease/leasehold terms depening on whether you rent/own.

UnworthyBean · 10 Jul 2020 at 11:05

For the price you may as well get a cover. Tenner or so for the cover outweighs the potential cost of repairing any rust or whatever.

How accessible is the balcony and can the bike be easily seen? Could be a deterrent but if they've somehow got on to your balcony they may well have tools to remove the chain or anchor.

Invertigo · 10 Jul 2020 at 11:37

The flat is owned so should be no issue with drilling the walls, there's plenty of other flats with decorations etc fixed to walls so clearly it's fine. It is a private balcony but it's only a first floor flat so I'm aware it's possible to get up to if someone is determined, we came home to find our back door broken one night but nothing taken, assumedly the alarm did enough to spook them. No reason they should be able to see a bike mind, as I say it is a half height brick wall (comes up to just below my ribs for reference, with a railing on top).

I have however just had a thought that the gutter drainage runs through the balcony and, with it being an old property, its a thick old cast iron pipe. Might do a decent job to just bolt onto that. The other option I could do is install a fine mesh wire between the underside of the balcony above and the wall of ours, seen a few neighbours with similar (more so the people living on ground floor, but still)

Probably wouldn't be going for anything too expensive currently anyway (looking circa £400) but on the other hand I also don't want to make it easy to pinch!