I live in an apartment complex and store mine and my wife’s bikes (along with a bunch of other stuff) in a restricted access storage locker within a small storage room down in the basement. Only residents with a storage locker can access the storage room (via electronic key fob). There are only 3 other occupied lockers in the storage room currently. The lockers have steel doors and keyed padlocks but the lockers do not extend all the way up to the ceiling. Instead the lockers have wire “roofs” on each of them and if you climb up you can look into them from above. I have a dog-proof seat cover for the back seat of my car that I usually just throw on top of the locker roof when not in use since it’s usually dirty. Last night I went down to grab my bike and noticed that the seat cover was on the floor of the storage room. There was also a folding chair set up with footprints on the seat next to my locker. To me, this is clear evidence that someone was looking into my locker from above and now I’m really paranoid that my bike will be stolen (I had my tri bike stolen from a similar, but slightly less secure, situation 5 years ago). Any ideas on how to better secure our bikes within my locker? There is no wifi or cell service down there so any form of monitored surveillance is out of the question.
Please don’t say “store your bikes in your apartment like you should.” There’s no room and my wife wouldn’t allow it anyway. She would make me sleep in the storage locker before she let my bike sleep in our place.
I notified the apartment and they basically just said “huh, that is weird” and left it at that.
I don’t know if someone was just being nosy (since they didn’t even bother to cover their tracks) or if they had malicious intent, but either way I’m going to be worried about it all the time now.
Lock it up like you would outside (u-lock to something secure). That being said, if it’s as isolated as it sounds you’re a bit SOL if someone is determined. The u-lock is really only buying you time for someone to notice the thief with an angle grinder going at it. Your best real protection would be making sure you have insurance coverage for them.
I have a similar storage locker, though my bikes aren’t in it. Some people in my locker room have re-enforced their “roof”. A couple ways to do it but the best way seems to be a sheet of expanded steel mesh (or plywood) cut to the size of the roof, and then supported with 2x4’s in each corner of the locker. This creates a privacy screen, but also another layer to cut through for the thieves. you could also sandwich some fabric between this and the wire roof so people can’t look in but you would probably need a flashlight when you went in.
I would also lock my bikes within the locker as an additional deterrent
Even if there isn’t wifi, it might be worth investing in a cheap fake security camera to install in your locker. You cannot fully prevent a very determined theif. You can only take steps to deter them elsewhere as they are usually looking for the least path of resistance.
Think of it this way…given today’s technology…if I were a thief that lived in the building, I would not mess with anything that had a camera around it. Nor would I go snooping around to see if the camera was real or not. Because video can automatically be uploaded to the cloud, if I were caught snooping around a real camera, that’s probably going to get reported and my building manager is going to have a word with me and I’ll be “red flagged.”
However if I were a thief that didn’t live in the building…camera’s aren’t nearly as effective so long as you cover your face.
I think that additional lock inside the storage locker is probably what I’ll have to do. The locker walls are flat though so nothing to lock a U-lock to. I ordered a cable lock knowing full well that it’s really just a temporary deterrent to a motivated thief and will lock both bikes plus whatever else all together. I assume I’m not dealing with a master criminal though, since whoever decided to take a peek left all of the evidence that they did so…
Reinforcing the roof is a good idea, but the space between the roof of the locker and the ceiling of the storage room is only about 2 feet. So if they tried to cut through the roof they would still have a really tough time getting a bike out successfully.
Welp, the thief (thieves actually it turns out) came back last night. Took my wife’s 5 year old road bike and all of our camping gear, but for some unknown reason left my brand new Felt DA1 behind. We have them clearly on camera but they don’t live in the building unfortunately. Either they didn’t notice the security camera right outside the door or they just didn’t care, but either way they didn’t even bother to cover their faces.