UKC

So my housemates and I are putting up a home wall in our basement - we have a pretty classic terrace just outside Sheffield city centre so it is damp and just about 6ft tall. However, I know there have been/still are some legendary basement walls in Sheffield and so I thought I'd cast the net out for any suggestions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated even just bits for controlling the damp.

Thanks! 

Come up with a vague design and then go to wickes and buy a bunch of wood and get at it! A cheap drill and saw are useful, buy a fancy pack of wood screws. If you have exposed beams in the ceiling you can use that to support it otherwise free standing with some big wooden poles to hold it up. Go like 45 degrees plus so you get a few moves of climbing. It’s pretty fun to build one I have one in my Sheffield cellar

Dont have the bottom of the wall sat on the floor, if you can. It will get very damp and start to delaminate. 

Use 18mm marine ply and coat it in at least one coat of yacht varnish (it is flexible so wont crack like normal varnish). 

Wooden holds will probably be better than plastic (they wont sweat as much). 

Another thing I'd maybe consider is the direction of airflow in the basement. In my house, the joists run perpendicular to the way the air would flow. The easiest thing would be to fix it to a single straight joist but 1) this wouldnt be as structural, and 2) it would potentially block the flow of air through the cellar. You would be better off in this instance fixing a beam perpendicular to the joists and attached to several, and then fix the head of the board to this. I imagine this could be tricky if the basement floor slopes at all as well. 

I'll probably think of some more things later.

If you live in Sheffield with probably the best choice of climbing walls and easily accessible crags and bouldering spots in the country, why bother? Unless you've got specific (wideboyz-esque) training goals I can't see the point - it's not the 80s any more.

The big advantage of having a board at home is the ability to train on it whenever you want. You aren't restricted by opening times, weather conditions, travel time etc.

If someone lives in Sheffield, and had the time to be able to train as much as they'd like at a wall, I would agree that there's not much advantage to them building a wall.

But for someone with a busy schedule, a board can be a fantastic way to squeeze in extra sessions when they otherwise wouldn't be able to climb.

if you've got a wall at home, you could squeeze in a quick session:

- before leaving for work in the morning when most walls are closed

- in the evening after most walls have closed

- on a lunch break while working from home

- while supervising children at home

- while cooking dinner

- in short time windows where even a 10 minute journey each way wouldn't leave enough time for a worthwhile session (and most people don't live within 10 minutes of a wall)

Yes fair enough. And projects are fun for the sake of it as well. I've just always been disappointed by my own attempts and friend's walls - by comparison a trip to the works is far more rewarding in terms of climbing fun and gains.

I had a cellar wall in Sheffield for about 15 years, built mainly from waterproof chipboard like this: https://www.diy.com/departments/chipboard-tongue-groove-floorboard-l-2-4m-w... 

Make sure it's the green-tinted version as the plain brown ones will not be good at all in damp conditions. At one stage we had a drain leak and for several months the cellar was flooded to a depth of about 2 feet. When it finally got fixed, the boards were still in absolutely perfect condition and remained good for however many years we still had the house.

The 18mm thickness itself will be completely fine, as long as you have supporting joists every 50cm or so, If you get the thicker (23mm or so) stuff you barely need any joists at all as it's so rigid.

As for design, it really depends what you want to train. I wanted to be able to do longer circuits so I had a steepish wall on one side (with a very small kickboard, a boarded roof section (actually with a shallow inverted pyramid for added interest) and some holds high on the opposing wall, but with a very high (1m?) kickboard on that side with no footholds on it, so there was little chance of rest positions. As such I could do 20-25 move circuits with no respite. I know that many people prefer the brutality of a plain 45 deg wall!

i had sheffield cellar boards for a long time, and the single best thing I ever did was to fit extractor fans either to air bricks or the coal chute if there is one. It controls the humidity better than passive ventilation, and particularly reduces the black mould which can occur on wooden or resin holds no matter how much chalk you use. Also buy a roll of plastic DPC and run it behind any timber that touches walls or floors.

The real problem is the floor and mats. There were certain cellars around Hunters Bar that had old mattresses which were a health hazard🤮Second hand gym mats are best, but even the plastic covered ones need to be off the floor to allow the floor to breathe otherwise there’s a build up of mould again and it gets pretty wet. my solution was dpc strips, battens and plywood for the floor.

Roughly how long do you leave the extractor fan on each day? Wondering about this for our cellar. 

Hi Andy, they had on/off wired into the lighting cct. so were on whenever anyone went down to the cellar, had humidity sensors too which you have to adjust throughout the year. I later moved on to larger garage walls, but the same advice applies.

Cheers Paul, I think I'll have a go at installing one. 

having a home wall also invaluable during a global pandemic!

What to build depends on your ambition and building skill but small space and a low ceiling is no barrier to making a very useful and interesting wall. I'd make it adjustable in some way so interest can be maintained longer term and so it serves well for warm-up, endurance and power training. That could be as simple as holds on the side walls so you can get your feet off the main steepness but I'd personally look to have some movable elements.

I'm in the cheap flooring materials, not marine-ply camp and I think most people over-build their frames. Timber is expensive, climbing loads are modest and a bit of flex doesn't matter. Don't skimp on structural fasteners though, damp conditions kill screws.

Depending how damp it is you'll probably need (and want for comfort) some forced ventilation or a dehumidifier.

jk

On the subject of ventilation, has anyone got any positive (or negative, I guess depending on whether you're in the suck or blow camp!) experience with fitting PIVs or extractors to their cellar? I'm in a Sheffield terrace also and the cellar is usually pretty dry but with the rain recently it's got a bit damp and a few wooden things stored down there have started to get some surface mold. The coal hole is open and I've got loads of air bricks but I think I could have improved air movement/changes.  

The plastic grids used for gravelling parking areas are great to go under mats

When I was a domestic electrician I fitted humidity controlled fans to a few Sheffield cellars. It works a treat keeping the mould off. The first one I did was for someone who had white cotton-wool like growths over everything, the fan totally sorted it out.

Fix a sheet of waterproof board over the coal hole, whizz a 4" hole in it, screw the fan in. Depending on the state of the chute, I sometimes ran flexible 4" duct from the back of the fan up to the grate and secured in place with metal zip ties. 

Don't build your wall over the fuse board.

About 15 years ago, I spent an uncomfortable day wedged round the back of an overhanging cellar board in Meersbrook after an electrical fire on the shower circuit necessitated an emergency upgrade.

Thanks! Theres a wall between the void under the kitchen (back room) and the main cellar (front room) and I was thinking about some sort of fan fitted there to suck air from the cellar (so it would draw new air from outside into the cellar) and push the air under the kitchen (where it would push the old air out the other side). I could just suck the air out the cellar like you say but I'm not sure that will ensure the air movement under the kitchen or just draw air into the cellar and circulate it.

I've fitted a humidity controlled extractor to my typical Sheffield terrace basement and its been absolutely brilliant. The floor was permanently damp and it couldn't really be used for storage, but it's now bone dry, and is basically an extra room to the house now. I did this around two years ago and it's stood the test of time. 

If anyone's thinking of doing it, they're a piece of piss to fit.

if there's a socket in the cellar, then put a plug on the extractor cable, otherwise depending on the installation it's notifiable Part P building regs. No big deal though.

PS, yes to the posts about boarding the coal chute and pting the extractor there. Always my preferred option to pull air out rather than push air around other sub-floor voids. There are too many places to 'leak' the humid air you're trying to get rid of.

You'd be better off with a decent fan on the coal chute and some air bricks in the wall between void and main cellar. Or even just take a brick out. If you've got gas/water pipes headed that way then you might already have a hole! As the man says above, you don't want to be pushing damp air from the main cellar under the kitchen.

Not a problem in my Sheffield terrace, at some point all the joists and floor in the kitchen obviously went rotten and it's now a whacking great concrete slab. 

I'm really only a (crap) winter climber so I like to keep my cellar nice and damp for that Scottish vibe.

Edit: if you need to borrow a 4" holesaw, give me a shout, I've got a reyt good one.

Thanks for the offer, I may well do! I have air bricks between the two voids already. Are there any plug&play fans you'd recommend? I have a socket down in the main cellar I could use. 

I always used to fit Vent Axia but that was a while ago. You'd most likely need to stick a length of flex and plug on it yourself, they just have a terminal block as they're typically hard-wired to the mains.

A decent outdoor paint for the boards makes all the difference for keeping the damp away.  
Good lighting makes it pleasant to climb. A dehumidifier stops it being horrendous most of the time. Horse matting is usually cheaper than gym matting, and good with the damp. Bring your pads back upstairs to save them holding the moisture. 

If you have a brick floor, clear out the mud a bit from between them and it helps with the damp clearing up. feel free to dm if you want any photos of our build  

I'm really interested in how you get on with this. I used to have a wall in my old garage but the ceiling was 8ft or so. My current garage is only 6'6" or so and I had written it off. Maybe I shouldn't have!