This turned out to be a long ramble, I did end up cutting it down a bit…honest…so apologies in advance.
Back in December I posted asking for advice about materials for making a home wall. The idea being converting my loft into a climbing room, I had never done much bouldering but had reached the point where I was not going to get past my 6A+/B lead without doing more training and working on strength and technique, with my local wall being 50 minutes drive away and not always having a partner to climb with (not to mention £7+ a pop) I figured that it would make sense to go with something at home. I should add that I’m no diy type bloke…in fact much the opposite (stands for “don’t involve yourself” don’t it?) so it did seem a bit dawnting…but what the hell. The loft space was a good size with 3 metre height and about 8x4 metre floor space. There was no flooring up there and about 3 inches of bat shit covering the place. First thing I did was get Bob the builder in, just check that structurally my roof and floor would be up to the job, he gave it the thumbs up so I got on with it. For the floor I just used 18mm chip stuff, was not to much trouble, though getting up the loft hatch proved interesting as in fact did everything else! I decided the angle of eaves where pretty steep and it would be a good idea to have one slightly lesser angled side so I studded out the left hand wall half way up to a large beam to make things a little easier, used 4x2 for this, also put in a large kicker running down the opposite side. I also wanted some kind of roof so I made a box section frame that slotted nicely on top the existing large fat bastard beams that basically hold my house up. I did have a certain amount of head scratching concerning whether I could get away with using Sterling USB board for all of the climbing surfaces, the advantage being that it’s considerably cheaper than 18mm ply, I researched it plenty and spoke to a very nice man at near by timber yard who had many years of knowledge of such things and assured me it would be fine. I have had no problems with T nuts pulling through or flexing/bending of boards even on the roof section so his advice so far has proved sound. Have to say that hammering in 700 T nuts in the confined space of loft was none to joyous affair. I have managed to pick up second hand holds as I’m going along, think there must be about 160 up there now but certainly could do with a few more, the floor is decked out with several single mattresses and a few gym mats so landings on the whole are not to bruising. So it all came together nicely, plenty of hours, much help from friends and countless splinters and I now have somewhere very local to train…I’m still piss weak but sure that that’s going to take longer than it did to build my woody! Thanks to those who posted advice on this forum and to those mates who got there hands dirty.
If I can do it…and I’m a numpty…given the space, so could anyone
Tools used:
Hammer, chisel, drill, saw, screwdriver, ladder, gaffer tape, iphone.
Cost: just under £700 +holds
Time 6 weeks
Here are a few pics:
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody1.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody2.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody3.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody4.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody5.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody6.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody7.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody8.jpg
http://www.ripple.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/woody9.jpg