Thread: Prop Storage Conditions

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Today my family put down their collective feet and demanded I rent a storage locker for the props, at least temporarily. I will have a climate-controlled unit kept at a steady 55 degrees during the winter months. Would it be safe to store latex items and Gemmy-quality animatronics in such temperatures, or will I need to keep those in the house?

Everything I own is stored in the basement, latex/rubber included, & it's fine, so I think you should be o.k.

We were thinking of doing that but, have one for the business already. It runs almost $1,100 a year. That is a lot of props we could buy if we DIDN'T rent storage. So everything is back in the rafters/basement/my office once again. lol I would think 55 would be perfect for latex. I would be more worried that it wasn't cooled and it would reach over a 100 in the hot summer mouths. It would also be better if you put them on the foam heads so they kept their shape or stuffed them with some type of batting. If it gets too hot the latex can stick together.

Yeah we just got rid of our storage room. I try not to think about how much money we've spent over the years! If you can easily afford it, more power to you. But you don't want to get into a situation where you set it up, put up shelving, buy more things to fill it up, then have to throw it all out because you can't make the payments anymore. A year and a half ago we were very close to doing this. Luckily we didn't (there was a huge amount of wasted space because we didn't have shelving in it), therefore shutting it down and taking everything home wound up being annoying and not catastrophic hoarder "piles of boxes in the living room" levels.

For that kind of money, build you a bigass shed. I built a 10x16 shed with a gambrel roof. Think the biggest shed at Lowes and Home Depot with higher walls so that I had more head room. I have my Halloween divied up between the garage, a room in the basement and the shed. However, if needed, I could store everything but my funeral carriage in the shed.

I second the shed. Plus think of all the travel time of taking your props to the storage place- getting them out! It's a losing game.

We were going to rent storage last year but at $1200-$1500 a year decided on spending that money to create "permanent" storage at our home.

1.) got a 10x8 shed at Costco for $500. This has tons of space if things are in tubs and stacked and labelled neatly.

2.) put 8 pallets down on 1 side of our home ( a side rarely seen or used) and got some big weather proof tarps at lowes and Costco and double wrapped our entire cemetery and pirate show, pretty much anything that can take any heat (wood, foam, metal, barrels, statues, etc) This created a huge amount of storage and cost very very little ($80 in tarps, pallets were free).

3.) Built rafters / storage in our garage basically a second floor in our garage. Did the construction myself and it created a HUGE amount of storage that stays cool all year round. This was not cheap to do, about $700 bucks but if you add everything we spent to create store, it equals 1 year of storage RENTAL. We have not used all that storage for 2 years with no additional cost ... So we are ahead of the game as far as I am concerned.

Also, everything that goes into storage in the rafters in the garage is tubbed. On one of the hottest days of the year here in Los Angeles, I had to go up there to get someone and I put my hand into a tub that had rubber / latex props and surprisingly everything in the tub was nice and cool so this eased my concern of ruining rubber and latex in heat because there was no heat.

When people see our haunt, they always ask "where the hell do you store all this stuff???". During the off season, when everything is in storage, you'd never even know we have anything like that because it is all out of sight.

Hope this info is helpful and gives you some ideas.

Originally Posted by hirez00

Also, everything that goes into storage in the rafters in the garage is tubbed. On one of the hottest days of the year here in Los Angeles, I had to go up there to get someone and I put my hand into a tub that had rubber / latex props and surprisingly everything in the tub was nice and cool so this eased my concern of ruining rubber and latex in heat because there was no heat.

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So you store bodies in your attic too?

Of course.

You can always bury your coffins. The neighbors may start to act suspicious though. If so, keep an eye on them.