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So I've been thinking about building my own little bouldering wall in my garage since the nearest gym is almost an hour away and rock is much farther. Would it even be worth the effort if I can only go about 8' high? How big are home walls usually?

Ours are about 13 or 14 feet I think. 8 feet can be fine if you want a 60 degree.

tutugirl has a fantastic one that is not very tall.

I hear Bcombs could offer some input on a garage gym.

My wall is 8 feet. It's cool.

Funny how I fall from a short distance too.

you want a woody in your garage? Rub it a little.

by the time you angle back 35-60 degrees you most likely need a kicker or filler board of 1-3 ft to fill the gap- do not make a vertical wall- go heavy on the T-nuts and don't hammer them in... makes for a good place to put stickers Go For It! it gives the goobers who go to garage sales the opportunity to ask you "what in the hell is that"? priceless

SCIN wrote:Ours are about 13 or 14 feet I think. 8 feet can be fine if you want a 60 degree.

i agree. Mine are about that tall also. The more faces you have to climb on the less bored you will be in the long run.

leave accses to the back for the inevitable spinners.

my basement is only 7 foot tall. I have a 12' long, 7' tall wall. It is set on a 45 degree angle (overhang). It has a one foot tall kickboard at the the bottom. It has a three foot wide roof section above it.

Buy your hardware (bolts, t-nuts, screws, a bunch of #2 phillops head drivers) at a hardware distributer. Don't get them from your local climbing store or buy them from a climbing website because you can cut your expenses to about a quarter of what you would pay at say Metolious. I suggest a fastenal, or another store similiar to that (kwikset has the cheapest prices in Ky).

Buy some liquid nails or get your mom or wifes hot glue gun out and put the glue on the t-nuts before you hammer them in. This will prevent them from backing out and "spinning" when you are trying to put a hold on your wall. Try to make sure that the t-nuts are flat to the back of the plywood and not tilted so that your bolts go in straight and don't cross thread when you are trying to put on a hold.

Leave a space behind the back of your boulderingwall and your actual wall to get behind it when you do strip out a t-nut you can replace it. You will need an access point to the back no matter what.

If you have no carpentry skills this will take a longtime and could be dangerous to build and climb on. Consult a carpenter if so. DO NOT use nails, use screws.

Consult the how-to-build a bouldering wall pamphlet at Metolious website if you want an even more indepth quide.

You can also build and make your own holds (plastic, wood and real rock) and make things for about 10% of the price you would spend otherwise.