How I made an EMT pipe rack/shelves

[CornMan]

Putting the EMT conduit in the rental truck and in the storage unit has always been a major hassle. If you put anything on top of the poles, you have to remove the stuff to get any poles out. Also, the stuff on the poles always seemed to slip and fall. I hope this makes things better. This may seem like an awful lot of fittings to use, but bear in mind that we already needed the bottom cradle to hold our EMT, it it is only 12 additional fittings to use. I plan on keeping the shelves assembled while we are in camp, but they are there available to use on our canopies in case of emergency.

First I make a cradle to fit the EMT conduit. The long pieces are 3 feet 9.75 inches long. The short pieces are 20"





Then I put the EMT conduit there.





Then I close the top of the cradle.





Home depot will cut a 4x8 piece of plywood right down the middle for a perfect fit. This actually is strong and stable enough to make a nice little bed. Home depot sells a pad that fits this perfectly.





The shelf can be used for storage. I will likely make a second shelf about 3' higher than the first shelf to make a two shelf unit.





I make the top shelf so that it can be the bottom cradle to put in the rental truck to move the poles from the storage to the rental truck. So, the top will become the bottom while in the truck, and vice versa while in the storage unit.





After I put the fittings with upward pole mounts, I position a piece of plywood.





I trace the fitting locations so I can cut the sections out to fit the lower shelf.





I put the poles together for the complete shelf frame. You have to be prepared to take things slow and keep cutting poles an inch or so shorter because of the way the fittings are made. You just have to be flexible and keep notching here and there while you're fitting it together. The top vertical poles are 31-3/4 inches long. I did this because we have an abundance of 8' vertical poles for our canopies, this wastes very little, and the stacked boxes fit very nicely.





I put on the plywood. Now we have bunk beds.





What was once a monumental waste of space in the storage and the rental truck now holds quite a bit of cargo and keeps it organized.

[trilobyte]

Nice work. I've got cages/pole storage I made out of wood. I actually made two sets, and use the second set for storing our empty coolers. That way, when it comes time to load the truck, the coolers come out and the second set is ready to toss on the truck so people can load poles. For bin storage, we use steel racks that we picked up at our friendly neighborhood big box warehouse joint. They were only about $10 more than going with fittings and EMT, but they can hold a lot more weight and are taller, plus the racks are on rock-solid casters. We don't take those racks to the playa, but they help us keep everything in storage pretty organized.

[CornMan]

I really like these tubs because they have holes that go through the lid and tub to lash them to the wall of the rental truck. They feel nice and strong too. They are currently on sale at HD for about 35% - 40% off. I bought some shipping labels from Office Max to label what goes in the tubs.

[FIGJAM]

I have one of those.

I put hinges on it and drilled a hole so I could lock it closed.