Storing a quad or snowmobile in a shed: what actually fits

If your quad or snowmobile spends the year under a tarp beside the garage, you've probably thought about a shed more than once. The trouble is that a shed can have plenty of floor space on paper and still be useless for a machine. The doors are too narrow, or they're on the wrong wall, or there's no room left to get off the seat once it's inside.

We build sheds in Nisku and deliver them around Edmonton and Leduc County, and machine storage is one of the jobs we get asked about most. This post covers how to size a shed for a quad or sled so it fits the first time.

Start with a tape measure on your own machine

Every quad and sled is different, so the numbers below are rough. A typical utility quad is somewhere around 4 ft wide and 6 to 7 ft long. A trail snowmobile is also roughly 4 ft wide at the skis, but it's long, often 10 to 11 ft, and mountain sleds with long tracks run longer still.

Don't trust a spec sheet or a guess. Go out with a tape and measure your machine at its widest point, which is usually the handlebars, mirrors or ski stance. Then measure the full length, including any hitch, rack or box you leave on it. Write down the height at the handlebars or windshield too. You'll need all three numbers when you talk to us.

Width matters more than square footage

Most people shop sheds by area. For a machine, that's the wrong number to start with.

Compare our 8 × 12 and 10 × 10. They're close in floor area, 96 square feet against 100, and close in price at $4,800 and $5,200. But a 4 ft wide quad in an 8 ft wide shed leaves you about 2 ft on each side, before you count the wall framing. You'd be squeezing past the fender to reach anything at the back. In a 10 ft wide shed, the same quad leaves room to walk down one side with a jerry can in your hand.

That's why we steer most machine owners toward our 10 ft wide sizes. An 8 ft wide shed can work for one small quad parked dead centre, but you'll feel the walls every time you use it. Ask us for the inside dimensions of any size you're looking at, since that's the number your machine has to fit.

Two things to ask us before you order

We don't list door openings on the website, because they depend on the size, the style and the wall height you pick. So ask us. Specifically:

• How wide and how tall is the door opening on the size and wall height I'm considering?
• Which wall are the doors on, the short end or the long side?

The second question catches people out. Say you want a 10 × 16 for an 11 ft sled. With the doors on a 10 ft end, the sled drives straight in lengthwise and you've got about 5 ft spare behind it. Put the doors on the 16 ft side and the shed is only 10 ft deep from the door, so the same sled won't go in straight.

Height matters as well. Our walls come in 4 ft, 5 ft, 6 ft, 7 ft or 7 ft 6 in, confirmed on the quote. If your quad has a tall windshield or you want to ride it in seated, tell us the height you measured and we'll match it to a wall height.

The 10 × 12 and the 10 × 16

These are the two sizes we'd look at first for machine storage. Both are in the full lineup on our sizes page.

The 10 × 12 starts at $6,000 before options and GST. It suits one quad with room around it for a rack of helmets, a toolbox and fuel. It can hold a short trail sled too, as long as the doors are on an end wall. Two quads side by side is a squeeze: two 4 ft machines in a 10 ft wide building leaves about 2 ft of space in total, and that's before framing.

The 10 × 16 starts at $6,500. For $500 more you get 4 extra feet of length, which is enough to park a sled nose to tail behind a quad, or to put a workbench across the back wall. If you own a sled at all, or think you'll buy one, we'd go straight to the 10 × 16. Adding length later isn't an option, and that $500 is the cheapest space you'll ever buy.

If neither fits, say you've got two side by side machines or a long mountain sled, we build custom footprints, priced on request. Our post on what size shed you need goes through sizing for everything else you might store.

Roll-up door or wood barn doors

Every barn shed comes with wood barn doors. They swing out, so you need clear ground in front of them to open them all the way. In an Edmonton winter, that means shovelling an arc in front of the shed before you can get the sled out.

A steel roll-up door is a $350 option. It rolls up inside and needs no clearance in front, so you only have to clear a path as wide as the machine. If you'll be pulling the machine out in January, we think the roll-up is worth it. If the quad comes out in May and goes back in October, the barn doors are fine and you can keep the $350. Ask us what opening size the roll-up gives on the shed you're quoting.

Leave room for a ramp, gear and fuel

Our floors sit up on pressure-treated skids, with treated joists at 24 inches on centre and a three-quarter-inch tongue-and-groove deck on top. That means the floor is higher than the ground outside, and you'll want a ramp to drive up. Ask us about the floor height and a ramp when you get your quote, and leave a few feet of flat ground in front of the doors for it.

Inside, plan for more than the machine. Helmets, a riding suit, a battery tender, a tow strap and a couple of fuel cans all need a spot. Give the fuel its own corner by the door, away from where you walk and where you hang gear. On a 10 × 16, the 5 ft or so behind a parked sled is enough for a shelf unit and a small bench.

One last thing before delivery: our trailer needs a clear path wide enough to reach the spot, and the shed slides onto a level, firm pad. Our post on getting your yard ready for delivery covers that. A gravel pad also gives a ramp something solid to sit on, and we can build one as part of set-up, quoted from a photo of your spot.

Questions people ask