PeteFree.comHome Depot Husky steel garage shelving unit — 77 in (wide) x 78 in (high) x 24 in (deep) — a review
© 2017 Peter Free
07 September 2017
A good (but numerically ridiculous) example of the difference that decent quality control makes
Home Depot's Husky shelving unit beat my older sample of an equivalent Lowe's Edsal silly, despite having a virtually identical design.
Older Edsal unit, left. Taller newer Husky, right.
Six years ago, I reviewed Lowe's "Edsal" brand shelving unit
It is the equivalent of my new sample of Home Depot's Husky shelving.
In 2011, the Edsal unit's sloppy tolerances made it difficult to square the rack up. And two of its wire shelves were too noticeably out of whack to fit properly.
Not so this Husky from Home Depot. It was perfectly packed in its 138 pound box. Nothing was bent. Even the attachment prongs on the shelf supports were equidistantly opened, so as to slide properly into the wedge-shaped holes that you can see on the uprights.
Everything went together tightly. The result was noticeably less sloppy than the Edsal unit from six years ago.
My (questionable) "test"
We just completed another military permanent change of station. I had the opportunity to assemble my 6 year old Edsal unit beside my new Husky shelving.
The Edsal still annoyed me the way it had when it was new. Out of square and with 2 shelves that do not lie properly in their rail channels. Rails that occasionally and erratically come loose, if you metaphorically breathe on them. And rail attachment prongs that insist on bending themselves either too open or too closed to fit properly into the wedge-shaped holes that you can see on the rack's uprights.
Also problematic, the Edsal's rail flanges (which hold the attachment prongs) are not (and never were) completely straight. This means that getting both prongs (per side) into the wedge-shaped holes at the same time is challenging. One or the other regularly pops out. I still haven't been able to get every one of them where it is supposed to be.
The Husky, in contrast, went up without a hitch.
Its tolerances are tight enough that the last rail in requires one to position it absolutely horizontally at the start. I inserted this last rail at eye level, so that I could easily see where it was positioned relative to the wedge-shaped holes that it is supposed to attach to. If you do that, you won't have any trouble.
The only squaring I had to do was to make a couple of circuits around the rack to ensure that each rail had been malleted down as far as it could go into its wedge-shaped holes. Once that was done, the unit was as rock solid as something this light in weight can be.
Unlike the Edsal, the Husky's wire shelves dropped easily and perfectly into place.
Why this obvious difference?
You can see from the photo that the two units are almost identical twins. They could come from the same factory.
Husky seems to have paid more attention to quality control (in my samples) than Edsal did. Proportionally slighter higher ratings on the Home Depot and Lowe's websites appear to confirm this.
A shared design flaw
The valley-shaped cross supports (of both brands) — that are placed at mid-width of each shelf and secured with the provided screw-head bolts and nuts — are not ideally engineered.
The holes are visually hidden beneath rails' shelf-supports. You cannot see what needs to be done, unless you move your head well into the rack or go to the opposite side and look across. Either way makes it difficult to hold what needs to be finagled.
This clumsy hole position, and the constricting sides of the support's valley shape, make inserting the bolt and attaching the nut (whether oriented up or down) more difficult than it should be.
Although safety (from snags and cuts) argues that one should insert the screw-headed bolt upward from underneath the rail — so that the protruding bolt end is inside the cross support's valley — it is easier to insert it downward. That way you see how to align the nut, rather than having to do this by feel.
Tightening these bolts is also a pain:
If you insert the screw-headed bolt facing down (which is easier), you can only get the corner of the tip of a long screwdriver onto its slot. That's because the rail lip prevents the screwdriver's vertical approach.
And if you insert the bolt facing upward — where you can see and insert the screwdriver normally — you will have the problem of trying to get a nut-gripping wrench into the support's narrow valley space.
Neither alternative works well. And neither allows robust tightening.
This is not a disaster. The only purpose to these bolts is to keep the cross support in lateral place under the wire shelf.
The bolts and support braces do not contribute noticeable structural rigidity. Their holes are too big. Which means that the bolts do not stay in precise place. And the cross supports themselves do not butt tightly up to the rails' outer sides.
Therefore, the only real problem with this design is the hassle of trying to get the bolts mildly secure. They will wiggle loose, if you do not.
A number of reviewers at Lowe's and Home Depot say that it took them annoyingly way longer than one would think such a simple bolting task should. I agree. This time-consuming irritation is the most significant down-side to assembling these two brands of racks. On the other hand, for people who move less than I do, it does not represent a continuing annoyance.
A note — regarding the more favorably reviewed Gladiator brand
Every time I go to buy a Gladiator unit, it has to be ordered. And then one has to wait a few weeks to pick it up.
In the midst of moving's "everywhere" disorder, who has patience for that?
The moral? — I would buy another Husky shelving unit
After the next PCS, I'll add an update regarding how dis- and reassembly of this one went.