UKC

I'm constructing a building for a climbing wall and workshop and was wondering about how to use the space. 

I've currently got this.. 

https://i.ibb.co/m0yCZjW/wall-photo.jpg

and was thinking about building a 30 degree wall on one side and a 15 degree on the other side. It's mostly training for outside in Scotland with some training just because I like climbing (at the Ice Factor mostly). 

I'm climbing about 6c indoors at the moment and my wife is climbing about 6a+ (indoors)

I was wondering whether over 15 degree options

https://i.ibb.co/Svy14Gj/walls-copy.jpg

1) have a vertical bottom half (so it's like a 10 degree when you start and works up to 15 as you go up a bit - see the GREEN line)
2) have a full 15 degree from the corner of the floor to where it meets the pitch of the roof. The ORANGE option
3) bring the wall in toward the 30 degree wall so I have more 15 degree to play with (but lose some of the vertical on the far wall) the BLUE option 

Part of it is whether  the 60 degree overhanging section that joins the two walls is useful as well... 

Thoughts?

Tim

In reply to timparkin:

I would go for your middle option with just a small kickboard. 

In reply to timparkin:

Jealous of your space!

If I had that space I'd have a 20 degree for circuits on one side and then maybe split the other side in half, with one half about 30 and one half about 45.  I'd squeeze a campus and finger board in there too.

In reply to jezb1:

I'll probably build in a set of campus rungs somewhere but big juggy ones with mini feet for  now .

I thought about splitting but as I think the 30 is enough for the moment (actually 15 is probably enough for now). I'm going to  make sure I can increase the angle if/when I get stronger.

thanks

In reply to Si dH:

Thanks Si - that's my first thoughts.. 

In reply to timparkin:

Personally I'd recommend against a 15 degree board as it leads quickly to training on really small holds, which in turn leads to injury, and knackered skin. 

The best bet is a 45 degree and 30 degree board, where you can use larger holds and still get the same training intensity, without the need to rebuild the whole board as you get stronger. It'll also be far more advantageous in terms of overall strength/power because you'll get very used to more physical climbing. What you could consider is making the 45 board fixed, and putting the 30 board on a pulley system to it can also be adjusted to 15/20 degrees as necessary. This is fairly easy to do, although it will naturally be less stable than a fixed wall which is what I'd personally recommend. 

Personally I wouldn't bother with a campus board as mentioned by others if you're building a good steep board anyway, unless you've got nothing better to do with the space. You can campus boulders on your board which is more varied, more specific and less likely to lead to injury, all without having to build a campus board in the first place. 

In terms of hold choice I'd recommend either wood holds, or buying used holds from gyms. Used holds are far more attractive for training as they're already worn in meaning you won't trash your skin as quickly, plus you have to hold on harder which all makes for better gains. The only time I'd advocate new resin holds is if you're building a moonboard due to the huge benefits of having the app and being able to very quickly find problems of every difficulty level to train on. 

Also consider a crack line of varying widths on either side of the boards, maybe fingers and ringlocks on the less steep side and hands/fists/offwidth on the steeper side. This is something you're almost guaranteed not to have access to in a climbing gym but will make a huge difference to your trad performance.

Also I highly recommend a set of rings which are massively useful for physical conditioning. 

I hope this helps and best of luck with your wall! 

In reply to MischaHY:

If I'm training endurance on small holds they won't be limit holds and I'll still be using feet. I can't see how this could cause injury. I'm not going to be doing limit bouldering on the 15.

I'd like to see a time when I can get to the 45 degree board but it would cost me too much in holds at the moment (I'd need real chunky ones which cost way more).

I agree with this definitely!
 

The other half of the workshop will include bandsaw, power carvers, etc. so I plan on making my own. Plus I might have a route into getting old commercial wall holds!

Absolutely!!! I've got some planned out that I can mount on T-nuts

yep! definitely!. 

I'm really hoping I can get to the point where I can make use of a steeper board. I might try to get mine closer to 35 and eventually put some moonboard holds up

In reply to timparkin:

I can't make out what you've done to replace the triangulation you've cut out of the roof. Apologies if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs here but without appropriate new reinforcement or the rafters you've cut out that shed is just waiting to collapse.

Jk

In reply to jkarran:

Double 2x5s at top of wall either side, 2x6 ridgelone plus the 30 degree wall section beams will span from floor to ridge line to create support and 15 degree will also add rigidity. The main is the load transfer on the wall tops though. They weren’t cut out, they were built like that. For the building to collapse, two of three things would have to happen.

1) ridgeline must bend - hence 2x6 

2) side walls must bend - hence double 2x5s

3)  the bottom beams of each A frame at either end must snap under tension - hence double 2x4s either end

The strength is enough to take about 2ft of snow (about 1.5 ton) without considering the additional structural reinforcing of climbing wall beams. The climbing wall beams act as an offset ridgeline support for the 30 degree and as pseudo collar ties for the 15 degree wall. 

I also used an EPDM rubber roof on 12mm OSB to lower the dead load of the roof. 

In reply to timparkin:

I'm not likely to get beyond F7b in the near future and would recommend the 15 and 30 degree combo as that's what I have. I'm more interested in endurance this steepness allows me to spend longer on the wall. I also find finger strength more useful on the routes I climb more useful than burly shoulder strength and the 15 is great for this. I can't think of a route or boulder problem I've climbed in the last 5 years that's been 45 deg. I accept the 45 board would get you strong its just that I'm never going to be strong enough to be able to do circuits on it.

A note on height - mine's 2.5m and I have a 30cm mat to fall onto. Falling onto my back from 4m I'd want 40cm or more. Bear in mind that you could easily spend over £1000 on mats for you wall, even second hand.

In reply to Toccata:

Thanks! That seems a lofty enough goal for me also but it's going to be mostly Lochaber trad so endurance is going to be a big goal (strength obviously plays a part with this but typically finger strength with some lock off strength).

I've been lucky enough to get hold of enough professional bouldering matting (I think it's at least 40cm perhaps larger) to cover the floor for a few hundred pounds. I also have an auto belay that was donated to me (just serviced) that I'm going to play with for when I want to keep going around the board until I completely fail. Might not be the most appropriate use for it but I won't know until I try.

In reply to jkarran:

Could you tell me how you would reinforce without rafters? I've had a few people look at it but I'm open to suggestions

In reply to timparkin:

Looking at the photo I can't see the 2x 2x5 wallplates and with the way the roof attaches to the wall with additional blocks it does look like you've cut the horizontals out. Anyway, glad to hear you've considered it. We get so many 'how to build a home wall' questions on here from people with varied knowledge and skills (rarely building/engineering/joinery since they're asking how to do that) it's worth pointing out when something looks sketchy. You never know what people don't know.

Re how I'd reinforce it. My mistake using the word rafter when I meant the horizontal tie, I'm not a joiner. I'd probably do what it sounds like you've done (which isn't immediately apparent in the pics), leave/put horizontal joists in tying very stiff wall tops together to stop the roof spreading but I'm not the right type of engineer to say that's the right or wrong approach, just the one I'd be inclined take were it mine. Alternatively you could turn the simple triangles into more complex trusses leaving you with most of the room height still available in the centre of the space. Sounds like you have it in hand though.

Re. climbing surface. I'm a big fan of adjustable home walls, ideally using hinged panels but a fixed wall with concave kink (can be just a tall vertical kicker) allows you to effectively alter the steepness by setting problems with the bulk of the climbing or the crux at different heights, higher for steeper.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

I've built the whole thing from scratch so the horizontals haven't been cut out, they were just never designed in in the first place. 

Your alternative (make roof ^ sections more complex and stronger by trussing) is essentially what the climbing wall sections are adding but you have to think of the wall/roof combined section as a single piece. If you look at the image below you can see that the left wall forms a strong triangle (the right slightly less strong but still enough IMO). The blue circle shows where the second 2x5 will go (not installed until after insulation goes in) this limit the amount of outward movement that will be transferred to the walls from pressure on the roof. The big red triangular sections won't bend however and so any outward movement of the top of the walls will transfer load back onto the roof section where the green arrows are shown. Essentially, the roof beam would have to bend in the transverse direction and eventually break in order for the top of the walls to move out. 

https://i.ibb.co/G27JNDh/x.jpg

I'm going to make the wall  a 25 degree moonboard style to begin with but make the whole section detatchable so I can make it adjustable  later when/if I get stronger. 

Thanks for the response!!!

Tim

In reply to timparkin:

It will fall down. 

In reply to ian caton:

I'll make sure I don't let you climb on it then...  :-P

In reply to timparkin:

I recommend Mitchells "Structure and Fabric".

There are lots of buildings in the world. It is known how it is done. 

Wouldn't go anywhere near it.

Good luck. 

In reply to ian caton:

I suggest you look at the history of vaulted roof design. 

Basically the ridge beam takes the majority of the load. Currently, the ridge beam is taking a dead load of approximately 100kg from the structure of the roof across this section. There is zero deflection of te ridge beam or bulging of the walls. The possible snow load at 6" depth (which is unlikely given  the EPDM rubber roof) is another 100kg. 

Watch this 1.7m 2x4 take approx 1000kg to breaking - extrapolate this to 3m and you get 566kg breaking load on a 2x4. A 2x6 has over double the strength (2.25x) of a 2x4 giving nearly 1300kg before breaking. 

youtube.com/watch?v=wvcISxs3YG4&

All of this presumes a lone ridge beam with no support etc. 

Given transfer of load to walls and climbing frame timbers I would be happy to more than double that breaking load. Hence we have a possible 100kg of 6" snow load (extreme for a village next to a sea loch) on a system that has a rough breaking strain of 2600kg.

Even if my calculations are out by 80% or more it's still within predicted load. Also, note the modulus of elasticity and the amount of deflection. Any load that is a small percentage of breaking load will  be show itself quite dramatically (over four inches of deflection before breaking)! I might notice that  

given 4" is the breaking deflection and I'm seeing no deflection at the moment - what does this imply about the %ge of breaking load on that 2x6?

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Let's say  I'm completely wrong though. I'm not a structural engineer, I only used to  design finite element modelling systems for electrical and mechanical analysis. 

How much load will a 3m 2x6 take before breaking? 

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Edit; Actually this is just coming across a dick waving by the both of us. If you've got any suggestions you're just shouting the climbing equivalent of "yer gonna die". So either suggest something, tell me where I'm wrong and why or carry on drive by commenting elsewhere please

In reply to timparkin:

I gave you my "thoughts". It's what you asked for.

In reply to ian caton:

Thanks - so constructive ...