UKC

I've noticed that the new Project Bouldering wall does not use T-nuts, rather self tapping wood screws directly into the plywood. I suspect this is a large saving on the cost of a new wall but will surely present a limitation in the number of re-settings of the wall. Can anyone quantify these savings against the cost of replacing the surface of the wall after the limit of resetting has been reached.

I think the calculation will go along the lines of
Savings
=======
cost of Tnuts * #nuts per meter sq * area of wall.


has to be greater than
Costs
=====
increased time taken to re-set routes, by professional route setters.
Cost of fairing wall after re-setting
cost of Replacing the ply surface after N re-sets ( due to the strength of the wall being compromised)

An anyone put figures to that?

Doesn't account of course to the huge benefit of keeping the initial set-up costs down for a new wall. I noticed that the route density on the project wall is pretty low in comparison to other bouldering walls I have been to, but this is probably down to limited set-up funds too.

This is all for purely academic interest. The Project Wall is great and I thoroughly recommend it,not least because there is acres of space to expand the wall when the demand warrants doing so.

Matt

In reply to mutt:
If you t-nut a sheet of ply with a 20cm matrix that's 72 nuts. Last time I bought some they were 12 pence each, so that is £8.64 for a 2400mm by 1200mm sheet. Then you have to factor in how long it will take to drill all those holes...
The cost of a replacement sheets of ply, assuming you are bulk buying, is circa £20. I guess the calculation they made was one of flexibility of hold positioning(which allows for some really creative route-setting), low labour costs and the saving on t-nuts.
Rob

In reply to mutt:

but surely it limits the type of hold they can use quite severely,

maybe the plan is to replace with t-nuts if it's popular enough by the time the board needs replacing

In reply to mutt:
Paid 6p per t nut. They're pronged t nuts. I've only just started using my own training board..about 16 feet by 12 feet of climbing..half 40 degrees than other.half 20 degrees..I change the holds quite a bit ..infact loads as I find new ways of torturing myself

Oh and yes 73 t nuts per 4x8 sheet of ply.

Paid about 80 quid for about 400 t nuts and 350 bolts... Can't remember length but half are about 50mm and the others are about 70mm. Not expensive.

In reply to mutt:

Hi Matt,

The decision was taken not to use t-nuts in order to provide maximum flexibility and therefore quality when setting.

The speed of setting is not noticeably different from when using t-nuts, if anything it's slightly quicker as we don't have to change drill bits.

It should be the intention of any good wall to constantly redevelop to provide their customers with the best climbing possible and so by the time the useful life of the boards has come to pass we would be looking to rebuild anyway.

The only holds we have been unable to use are tiny bolt-on foot holds as there isn't space to drill them out for screw-ons but that's not an issue as there are plenty of small screw-on footholds already made.

We have NO spinning holds.

We have NO cross threaded t-nuts.

The decision was not financially driven.

I must say I don't agree with you on route density, there are only a limited number of colours available, if you look again you will see there isn't really anywhere to add another yellow, blue, green, red, purple without them overlapping with other routes of the same colour. I think it looks less congested because we don't have t-nut holes breaking up the wall space and we don't have loads of big jugs on the wall.

Personally I prefer it a little less congested as I'm not so worried about hitting my face as I fall off the slab!

Fred

P.S the initial set-up cost is all in the crash mats!