UKC

Hi guys,

In need of some advice from any Climbers with engineering heads!

I've got a double detached garage I'm looking at building a home wall in. Its single line of breeze Block with a brick exterior. The roof is apex and supported by a series of wooden joists.

My big decision is whether I can attach the wall (45 degree overhang) direct to the breeze Block or go freestanding. Anyone have any insights or know somewhere where you can easily check this out (without paying an engineer £££ to do a site inspection)?

By breezebloc do you mean concrete or the foamed chalky stuff?

Either way I'd build it of the floor and the roof trusses. I'd also build it adjustable.

If you're not happy DiY just get a joiner round for a quote.

jk

Sounds very similar to my own garage - i'm planning to build a wall in mine too. My thought was to build with the top edge of the wall attached to my (substantial) ridge beam, with floorstanding joists for taking a good amount of the weight of the climbing wall and also plugged to the breezeblock wall for secondary support/stability only. My "breezeblocks" are 7N solid concrete 100m thick blocks, fairly standard, but yours may differ.

I had an un-official chat with a chartered structural engineer and he suggested that my plan would most likely be fine, so long as the top edge of the wall is attached with brackets to the ridge beam and the beam is taking a good amount of downwards force, as opposed to simply leaning the joists for the climbing wall up against the ridge beam and letting the ridge beam take significant lateral forces - ridge beams are far stronger vertically than horizontally after all, so it makes sense. I suggested that joist hangers would be appropriate for this.

I think support relying solely on a breezeblock wall for support might eventually see you buried under a pile of plywood and breezeblock fragments! The forces exerted by a big steep bouldering wall plus a person yarding about on it will be significant - and the forces will be acting in the weakest direction of the plugs too, i.e. pulling directly outwards.

Building an adjustable wall that is rock solid and will always be well supported can be a bit of a challenge, but if you're up to the job then sure, adjustability is a good feature to have.

Thanks guys.

My breeze blocks I believe are standard concrete ones and my construction skills definitely don't extend to the ability of an adjustable wall.

So my sense is building a wooden frame on to the breeze Block and from there, mounting on the main bouldering wall. Fixing it to the ceiling joists and probably a couple of vertical 'pillars' of wood at each end to carry additional load.

Sounds reasonable - the vertical pillars would be a good "insurance policy" for the structure. I'd try to load the breezeblock fixings as little as you can - build the skeleton of the wooden frame first and properly secure to ridge beam before adding bracing and the heavy plywood. I'm planning to make mine with "trusses" spaced 60cm apart (the profile of my wall will change a lot from one side to the other), each secured to wall and ridge, and then add cross-bracing before the plywood skin. If you're a bit tight on storage space in the garage, you can put some pretty big shelves in the back side of the wall with some forward planning too, access permitting.

An adjustable wall can be really simple, just a panel or series of panels, resting on the floor where it meets the garage wall, stiffened with 2x3 or 2x4, supported at the top by rope or chain back to the garage roof structure.

Unless your garage is tumbledown or you do something really mad (like cutting out truss work) you won't pull it down by building a board into it.

I built my 8'x8' 30deg board off 3x M12 expanding anchors in concrete block (double thickness wall, nowhere near the top course). It worked fine but with hindsight taking the frame 3 more feet to the ceiling would have been easier and if I were doing it again I'd definitely make it adjustable.

jk