Building a Garage Training Center

[mmalin360]

Hello everyone,

I have been a silent reader on the forums for quite some time now, but the time has finally come for me to post too.

First of all, I want to say that the community has been awesome on this forum. I am very thankful for all of the information which is available on here.

I have been given a nice Christmas present this year: permission to gut the garage and build my own training center. I immediately wanted to come to the community here for some advice...


The space with which I can work with is of the following dimensions:

200in long by 136in wide = 16.7ft long by 11.3ft wide

Minimum roof beam height is = 86in (7.2ft)

Maximum roof beam height is = 113in (9.4ft)

The garage is made out of a concrete style brick (I believe?) and has wood truss style roof supports.


Here are some pictures of the garage:





My first step is to insulate the garage door and roof. That has already begun.


If possible, this is what I would like to achieve within the training garage:

-ARCing space

-Limit bouldering space / begginer campus board set-up

-Hangboarding space

-Storage area for garden tools (should be behind one of the walls)

Given the things that I want to achieve with my training space and how the garage is constructed, do you believe that all of the above listed wishes are possible?

What would be a good "starting point" design?

Should I start looking for some adjustable wall designs?

Should I settle for one large, non-adjustable wall, at a pretty moderate inclination (let's say 10-15degrees overhanging) and just change hold size between the base fitness and power phases?

Do the garage walls and roofing look safe to anchor climbing walls to?

What would be the best way to attach my wall/s in my case?

I really do not know where to even to start on this project, so any pointers would be helpful. I would do everything possible to be able to do the bulk of my RPTM training at my house instead of heading out to one of the many crowded Denver area climbing zoos, erm, gyms.

My budget is not unlimited, but it is substantial as I have been saving for this project for quite some time now.

Thanks for everyone's help in advance and happy 2018 to everyone!

[MarkAnderson]

Welcome! I can't see any of your photos for some reason. When you say "concrete style brick", could you perhaps mean cinder block? Is the floor a concrete slab? I would be reluctant to use a cinder block wall to support any loads other than compression, so you may want to consider running joists between the concrete floor (ie bolting into the concrete floor) and the roof trusses.

-As far as basic shape, in general I would not build a woody around ARCing, because the return on investment is pretty poor (in terms of real estate required for the training benefit--more explanation on this idea in my Lazy H blog post). That said, you have enough space that you could easily do a tunnel design (two walls facing each other, like Charlie S' Forearm Farm). One could be ~10 deg for warmup and ARCing, the other could be your LBing wall.
-If I were you I'd make the hangboard easily removable (French cleat or similar?) so that you can use that area for bouldering whenever you aren't hangboarding.
-Since you apparently live in CO, consider the orientation of your wall with respect to the Sun. If possible, put the limit bouldering surface on the north side.

Hopefully that's enough to get the conversation going....

Since

[climber511]

It sounds as if you have little to no construction experience so my first recommendation would be to get a contractor of some kind to at the least advise you on how to safely build whatever it is you decide on - he could save you a world of grief.

[Chris W]

I like the "tunnel design" Mark is talking about from Charlie's Forearm Farm for your space. I also like climber511's advice if you don't have a lot of construction experience.

Most of my work is done on my 15 degree wall and my 35 degree wall. I think you'd do fine with one side at 10-15 degrees and one side at 30 degrees. I wouldn't try to do an adjustable wall angle. I also don't change my holds between phases. My walls are only 8 feet wide (kind of wish they were 12 feet) but it still is enough space that I don't need to change holds.

[Charlie S]

Trying to get the pictures to work would help us answer your questions better. Looks like the issue is on the photobucket side. Do you have a Mountain Project account? I cross-link my photos through there.

The "tunnel" design does allow you to use fewer pads. I had originally looked at adjustable angle stuff, but it was significantly easier, cheaper, and allowed for more routes/variation to have different angled walls. Maybe if it was your only option, but sounds like you have enough space to go wide.

For reference, my space is 16'x16' floor plan, with about 12' high walls. Apart from the height, that design could easily fit within your floor plan.

[mmalin360]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your replies. I have tried to fix my image hosting issue. Let me know if the picture links are still broken.

As all of you guys have noticed, I do not have any construction experience... outside of some simple woodworking that I learned building a couple of freestanding hangboard setups for myself and a friend or two. I will definitely look for some kind of a consultant for the project. I am not looking for someone to build it for me as I want to do the work myself, but I would like a consult on the safety of the whole plan / design. Can anyone recommend someone in the Denver metro area?

Mark, I believe that the walls are cinder blocks. I am not sure though. The wall is visible in my second picture. The floor in the garage is concrete. I am with you on making the walls steeper and getting a better bang for my infrastructure buck. I will make sure that the hangboard is removeable. I am already using a french cleat system on my closet setup. Also, thank you for the LB surface on the north side recommendation; I will check if it is possible.

Charlie, I like your Forearm Farm idea of not anchoring to walls, instead to the floor and the roof supports. I also like your design. I need to figgure out how tall and long my 2 walls can be, given the desired inclination angles and the width of my garage; I only have about 11.25ft to work with in terms of width. I wish that I had a 16 by 16ft space like you. What angle is your warm-up / ARC wall?

[tetrault]

For your ARC angle question, I have had small home walls at vertical, 5 deg, and 8 deg (copied the Lazy H after the blog came out - thanks!). In my opinion, vertical gets miserable quick, 5 deg is OK, but 8 deg allows for more hold and movement variety while still keeping hold size small. No experience with any steeper.

Edited after the comment was made below about the rock castle-

Agree with a steep limit boulder wall. I had tried at one point to do so on a 12 degree wall. I may be the weakest bouldered on here, but the holds couldn't be small enough and the movement had to be tweaky and awkward for proper difficulty. 20 degrees worked for me, and 25 was even better. Again, no experience with any steeper on a woody.

[aikibujin]

I agree with Mark, don't build your woody around the idea to ARC on it, it eats up too much space and will not be hard enough for you to do other training. My Rock Castle is a simple 8 ft x 11 ft wall overhung at 30 degrees. I can't ARC on it in a traditional sense, but with some creativity and a high tolerance for boredom I can do "ARC-type" workouts on it (I was ARCing on a hangboard before this so I may be a "special" case). Before the Rock Castle was built, Mark suggested that I go climb at a bunch of different gyms and figure out the wall angle I liked the most. I settled on 30 degrees. In my opinion it's better to err on the side of too steep (too hard) than not steep enough (too easy), so you can grow into it as you train and get stronger. So if you have only a small space (I did), I wouldn't put anything in the 0-10 degree range because you will outgrow that quickly.

I know climbnkev built some home walls in the Denver area, so maybe he can chime in and help you a bit. He built this drool-worthy setup in Denver just a few months ago.

[MarkAnderson]

The Lazy H is only 12’ “wide” (“deep” is probably a better word), so you have plenty of space for two opposing walls. I would take out those horizontal beams in the roof once you have the climbing wall joists installed—the joists will provide much more support, making those beams redundant (and giving you a bit more height).

Another more radical ideal might be to remove and increase the pitch of the roof a bit if you can afford it. Looks like it would be simple enough to do and you could get a lot more height. Currently the roof pitch is quite flat. That might raise some permitting issues though.

[Charlie S]

My "ARC wall" is 15 degrees. I also have a 30 and a 40 (Moonboard).

I spend most of my time on the 15 degree. It's about 5-10 degrees steeper than my projects' cruxes.

My first thought looking at your garage is to get rid of the garage door, or replace it with a roll-up door. The guides and motor assembly make all that space (and the walls next to it) useless, unless you want to build under it (which at 7' is hardly worth it).

Are you familiar with Google Sketchup? Or if you have some drafting experience, DraftSight is essentially a freeware version of AutoCAD. Playing around with those programs coming up with designs will really help you figure it out before you put in the investment of materials.

Here's my conceptual build using a cloud-based CAD software called OnShape:


It's not particularly user friendly.  But if you have any 3D modeling experience, it should come pretty easily.

Edit: Lighting!  You want your place to be a good area to hang out.  Lighting goes a long way.  The new T8 fluorescent lights are really bright for even just a 4ft section. 

[Charlie S]

So you can get in a 8' tall 15 degree wall, a 8.75' tall 40 degree (but you'll get more climbing length because of the angle), and a 9'ish tall 30 degree.  You can use the remaining section of wall for your hangboard or campus board.

[jetjackson]

Dec 28, 2017 8:17:08 GMT -7 aikibujin said:

Isn't that avaserfi's wall? Looks super familiar.

[mmalin360]

Hi Guys,

I am sorry for not keeping in touch regarding the garage project but things got super busy after the new year. I couldn't keep up with everything.

Hoping to get everything rolling beginning this week.

Here are some updates:

• I am looking for someone to come and have a look at the garage and evaluate the idea. Hopefully, they will say that the roof is sound to attach the climbing walls to.
• I am looking into getting the automatic garage door replaced with a roll up door. Hopefully, I'll find a reasonable offer.
  
• I've gotten an account with Onshape to model the garage and to model the walls.

I think that the LB terrain on the north wall of the garage will be 30deg overhanging and about 9ft tall (Thank you for the dimensions Charlie S) and I'll design a wider, but shorter, 8-10deg overhanging wall on the south side with some ARCing terrain. The remainder of the space will be used for the hangboard/campus.


I'll work up some designs soon and share. Thank you everyone for your help so far.