UKC

I am absolutely comically shite at DIY, however I'm lucky enough to have a very handy Dad who I'm going to get to build a home board for me in the attic room of my house.  I explained what I wanted to him (he's not a climber) and he said it sounded like what i bassically wanted was a stud wall, made of plywood, at an angle, which he could easily do. 

Is this right? Is there anything critical I need to tell my Dad that makes a board different to a stud wall?  

Cheers!

Basically yes. But it'll also have someone swinging around on it, have holds attached to it and it'll be a lot heavier than a standard stud wall so needs to be designed accordingly. And it'll mean you dropping off it onto the ceiling of the room(s) below.

The only critical thing I would check is that an 'attic room' might not be properly floored if it has been converted from an original attic.  If the floor has been installed on the original ceiling timbers, then they won't be happy with significant loads being applied.

It is usually pretty easy to install a proper load-bearing floor, but how this is done will depend a bit on how the roof is built (Traditional style A frame or modern style factory built frames).

Cheers, it's a victorian house and the top floor rooms are original (I presume it's where ones servants would have lived). falling through the floor was somthing that crossed my mind!

Should be load bearing in that case but why not ask your handy old man about bracing and strengthening the timbers to be on the safe side maybe? 
Edit - although you’d have to lift the boards to check which could be a bit of a pain.

The joists in my Edwardian house, so post-Victorian, are surprisingly narrow by modern standards so definitely worth checking what’s there before assuming it’ll take the extra load. We had some work done a while back that involve taking down a downstairs ceiling. The builders ended up reinforcing the joists as they didn’t feel comfortable leaving it as it was after they’d seen it. 

Thanks all, I will pass on to my Dad, who over engineers everything (which is probably good as I am a hopeless bodger)

Give yourself a kickboard so you can vary the effective steepness by choosing the height of your feet.

Don't let your dad overengineer it too much, the price of timber is absurd and home climbing walls do not need to be anywhere near as stiff as most people build them.

8x2 T&G chipboard flooring is much cheaper than even rubbish plywood and it'll go upstairs stress free without cuts.

jk

I have found the chip board to be no where near as good as ply. over time the screws have worked loose. 

Work loose as in need tightening or strip and can't be tightened?

jk

Be extremely careful of electric cables. Climbing walls are against building regs. All the plasterboard in the rest of the house are fireproof and thereby unlikely to propagate electrical fires. This is not true of plywood. A friend had to take his walk down after a building inspector refused to sign off his extension until it was covered in plasterboard. 

That is only true if the climbing wall actually functions as a partition wall. If the actual partition wall behind the climbing wall is still intact, the room is not compromised as far as fire regulations are concerned.

Surely a climbing wall is just furniture fixed to the building for security?

jk

Not so. What furniture in your house enclosed services like gas or electric. And what furniture gets screw put through it? The OP may burn down his house if he isn't very careful. 

Not most climbing walls. Most kitchen cabinets.

Most kitchen cabinets.

True with all DIY at all times. Even non-fitted wardrobes are meant to be screwed into walls so that they don’t topple over, you have to make sure you don’t screw into anything important.

Oh, I've drilled loads of holes in walls and yet to burn anything down, there just always in the wrong place and never level! 

Seriously though, I do own a magic thingy that goes beep near cables.

Don't know how the bloody thing works though😉

Where the stairs go through the floor, check the thickness of the ceiling (i.e. the bulkhead). The floor joists in my ground and first floor are ~8 inches but the attic floor depth is more like 6 inches, so I know the attic floor joists are less burly. They often just sit on top of all the first floor walls so were seemingly made less beefy (also probably because they weren't going to be supporting the load of any internal walls).  

I image the OP is suggesting that the plywood be affixed to the purlins and what not. Therefore it is a part of the superstructure. My wall is free standing and so is just a bit of furniture. But anyway the point is not that he will be in breach of building regs. It's that building a wall like that is inherently dangerous for the reasons I have outlined. The building regs are there to keep you and the other members of the household safe from fire and other hazards. You can ignore them, and many home walls are affixed to the superstructure or partitions in the house. Just do so with caution and inform yourself of the risks that you take 

Thanks, good tip.

And so have I but there is always plaster or plasterboard to stop a mistake turning into an inferno. 

You can do that in the kitchen because the plasterboard will stop a fire if you start one with a spark when you fuze the lights.  There is no such protection in the loft 

If it's an attic, it's a boarded out attic, which is fine. If it's in a room in the roof (as described), it's furniture fixed to a wall.

I can see that taken to extremes you have a fully ply skinned room which would need intumescent coating to pass (assuming that's still allowed) an inspection but short of that, there is a middle ground where a normal amount of flammable furniture is anticipated and allowed, whether or not it's screwed to the walls.

Eh, a 'wall' fixed to your house is 'inherently dangerous' but your free standing wall isn't? I don't get it.

There's nothing in the building reg's to stop you fixing furniture to a wall, flammable or not. Think about your kitchen cupboards.

Nor to stop you boarding out a loft.

jk

If you put a screw through a wire in the kitchen ceiling, and even through some partition walls, it can start a fire in the subfloor upstairs, and in most houses that’s wood, so it won’t necessarily help. Plus, not all plasterboard is fire rated (the building regs have specific requirements on that).

I think you’re misunderstanding me. My point here is not that you should ignore fire regs, *far* from it, it is that you are extrapolating from one very particular situation to the general case, especially as the OP is talking about an attic room, not a loft.

Let’s establish exactly what the plan is first and then determine how safe it is, otherwise things are getting unnecessarily confused. 

To clear up any confusion, it's a 3rd floor room on the house, not an attic (apologies for my intiall confusing description).  The fire risk doesn't bother me, as this won't be done by me it will be done with someone with considerable experience. What does bother me is the load bearing aspects, as my non climbing Dad will not have factored me flying off my super gnarly home setting, and I will definitely check this out

Yeah, definitely check the floor out. Since it’s an actual original floor of the house it should be fine but better be safe than sorry. Tell your dad you’re expecting to be jumping up and down repeatedly and he should be able to assess the floor joists accordingly.

Edit: If the joists are good enough to be safe but deflect too much, you could figure out a way of spreading the load under the pad, thick ply or something.

A nice big foam mat will help spread that load but then they tend to weigh a lot in themselves. I got a single mat from an old closed climbing wall (30cm thick, about 2.5m x 1.5) and it weighed probably double me. 

I have found they work loose and eventfully they need to be moved move so with feet than hands 

i’ve built a few home walls over the years. It’s possible to build the frame out of 100x50 CLS as long as it’s adequately triangulated onto the back wall. I’m just adding a second wall to my garage. For both, I used 150x25, as there’s a local fencing merchant which sells it really cheap. 18mm shuttering plywood is usually £40 per sheet at Travis Perkins, but keep an eye out online for their sales. Last time I bought some in their sales, and turning up in a van for trade discount dropped them to £25 per sheet. 

Generally £200 all in for an 8’ wide, wall at 20-45 degrees including 200 tnuts. Frame at 2’ centres for the verticals, 4’ for the horizontals. drill the boards for the tnuts in an 8 inch grid, with a 4 inch border, which means when you fit the boards, your tnuts aren’t over the framing. 72 tnuts per sheet in a 6x12 grid leaves plent of space for screw ons.

Pics of my existing wall, plus a new one under construction

Your floor will be absolutely fine, you're never going to be falling from any height (unless you have an unusually tall room?) therefore you won't generate any great forces that can't be dissipated by whatever you are landing on. 

Your basic description is correct, the studs will support the narrow strips of ply (can't get big sheets up a narrow attic staircase?) the crucial thing is what's holding it up? avoid any legs/ supports on the front as they seriously limit usability and brace it for lateral forces from swinging side to side on it.

you can balance cost between the materials used if you use 18mm ply you can get away with less timber to support it, if you choose thinner ply/other sheet material you need to pay for much more timber to stop it flexing.

If you own the house there's nothing else to worry about really.

I’d be keen to follow this project and would benefit from any learnings you can share (maybe vicariously, if that’s an appropriate word, from your dad). 
I had this pipe dream of a board on which the angles could be adjusted, maybe by securing the top on chains or something so my kids could use it at easier angles, but my wife seems to have other ideas about the loft now. 
You know how it goes; I like blue, she likes red, so we compromise and go with red. 

Amazing thanks, I will send that photo to my dad as he was asking for some examples (allthough alas mine will only be 6 foot wide)

I toyed with the idea of adjustable angles, but as I'm not doing itself I felt a bit mean asking someone else to build it so am going with the simplest option (I'm going with 35 degrees). It was a consessision my wife made when we recently moved house (which I didn't really want to do) that I could have a board. 

Adjustable is actually very little extra work for greater utility and practicality, especially if it's small, not too steep and and not overbuilt. Worth an ask if your dad is pretty handy. Just give some thought to a back-up soft stop in case it gets away from you.

Two or three knotty ropes passing through keyhole slots in the (locally reinforced) board skin is probably the simplest adjuster/support and adding a hinge line is trivial.

jk

it’s loads easier to have the board at a fixed angle, and determine difficulty by hold size. Even at 35 degrees, the kids will swarm all over it with appropriate holds.

Great point!

I used some shackles and steel chains for mine (T-nutted hangers into the legs) but I had an A-frame style construction so it was a no-brainer as I'd need something to hold it together regardless.