Building a garage climbing wall - questions

I'm looking at building a climbing wall in my garage, but have zero carpentry experience. The board would be 8' x 12' and fixed at a 40 degree overhanging angle (exactly like a Moon board or Tension board). A few questions:

1. Are the ceiling joists in my garage strong enough to support the climbing wall? I was thinking about attaching sleepers across three of the joists and then attaching the climbing wall studs to the sleepers and the wall studs, like in the Metolius plans. But the ceiling joists in my garage aren't supporting a room above them, just the roof, as you can see in the pictures.

2. For a freestanding wall, is it better for the support structure to be an A-frame with angled support posts, or vertical support posts?

3. Many freestanding walls have a design where the support posts are adjacent to the wall frame. Is this adequate, or would it be stronger if the support posts were directly under the wall frame?

Alternately, can anyone recommend a carpenter in the Denver area that can build me the framing at a fair price?

Thanks for reading through and appreciate any advice.

I can only answer the question about the free standing. Mine was (just tore it down to build a permanent wall) not A-frame, the support was vertical. And supports were adjacent using lag bolts. It was really solid.

Thanks guys, this is helpful. Here is my design so far:

It's basically two triangle frames built from 2x6 (green) with plywood panels (red) attached to the frame with 2x4 studs on the back (blue). Advantage is it should be easy for one person to build. Make the two triangles, stand them up, then slide the panels on from the back and attach the studs to the frame.

My main concern with the design is that all of the weight of the panels and climber goes onto the triangle frames. The kickboard isn't supporting any weight, it's just attached on the back like the other panels. It's the same design as shown on this website, but without the horizontal crossbeams. jeremyong.com/tension_board…

What do you guys think? Look sturdy or would you change something?

https://www.metoliusclimbing.com/pdf/How-to-Build-a-Home-Climbing-Wall.pdf

here's the link for the Metolius plans you mentions

super helpful, yet concise

Prav C wrote:

Thanks guys, this is helpful. Here is my design so far:

It's basically two triangle frames built from 2x6 (green) with plywood panels (red) attached to the frame with 2x4 studs on the back (blue). Advantage is it should be easy for one person to build. Make the two triangles, stand them up, then slide the panels on from the back and attach the studs to the frame.

My main concern with the design is that all of the weight of the panels and climber goes onto the triangle frames. The kickboard isn't supporting any weight, it's just attached on the back like the other panels. It's the same design as shown on this website, but without the horizontal crossbeams. jeremyong.com/tension_board…

What do you guys think? Look sturdy or would you change something?

Look at my picture above. This is essentially what I had built, except my supports were turned 90 degrees compared to those in your diagram. Not sure if that really makes any difference. I had also made a box frame for my kicker, so perhaps that was providing more support than just the legs, so maybe consider doing that. 

I recently finished my 8'x12' 40° wall and it is supported by the 2x4's making up the bottom chord of the roof trusses (edited for accuracy) similar to yours. I added significant reinforcement to the joists and the final result is rock solid. It sounds like you may already be going with the freestanding option but if not I am happy to provide you more info on my setup.

We had to build a more-or-less free-standing wall because the rafters in our garage are not load-bearing or even up to code. We built a header of screwed together 2x8s resting on 4x4 posts and bolted them to the floor. The joists connect from the header to a box, which is also bolted to the floor. I'd be happy to share more details if anyone is interested. 

Here is the final product: 

I built a freestanding 8'x10' 40° wall over the holidays and assembled it alone (with 1 helper at one point, who didn't need to do any heavy lifting, but you could probably do without them). I took some inspiration from csproul's design actually. It's very stable. Here it is from the front in real life, and back in Sketchup.

 All wood is 2x6s except for the bottom rails connecting the supports to the kicker, which are 2x4. All joints in the supports are attached with 1/2" diameter bolts, with 2 in each top joint (so 8 bolts total). The vertical joists are secured to the kicker with joist hangers. I got the plywood ripped down to 2x8 sheets at the hardware store so I could fit them in the car, but that also made it possible to install them on my own pretty easily by making cleats out of scrap from the 2x6s.

The assembly order is:

1. Make the kicker
2. Install the joist hangers on the top of the kicker
3. Lean the kicker forwards to screw in the joists to the kicker while the joists are parallel to the ground. Protip, you can use the offcuts from the angled cuts for the joists to support the kicker leaning forwards (you can see this if you zoom in on the kicker in the image below).
   
4. Attach the header at the end of the joists
5. Bolt the support 2x6s loosely to the top of the wall
6. Lift the joists up, until the supports are vertical. I used some rope and microtraxions attached to the bottom of the supports and the kicker, so that I could stop lifting the joists if I wanted and the supports would be held at their current position instead of falling back down. This is what I needed a helper for (to pull the rope through the traxions) but you could probably work it out alone and without the rope. Having someone else to help lift would be better though.
   
7. Add the 2x4 rails at the bottom to hold the supports in place.

I think your design will be harder to assemble as one person than you are expecting.

Thanks so much for all the info, Matt those instructions will be very helpful. I decided to go the professional route with an MP user who is a contractor and has experience building climbing walls. If anyone else is interested I can put you in touch.

what kind of paint do ya'll use for making it look all pretty and nice? Basic interior oil paint?

Dan Bookless wrote:

what kind of paint do ya'll use for making it look all pretty and nice? Basic interior oil paint?

We used the tintable chalkboard paint from Lowes because we bought a tension board but not the LED light system. With the chalkboard paint, we can tick routes in sidewalk chalk and easily erase them when we are done.

Creed Archibald wrote:

We used the tintable chalkboard paint from Lowes because we bought a tension board but not the LED light system. With the chalkboard paint, we can tick routes in sidewalk chalk and easily erase them when we are done.

I used chalkboard paint as well.

Dan Bookless wrote:

what kind of paint do ya'll use for making it look all pretty and nice? Basic interior oil paint?

I used a coat of primer, then an interior/exterior semi gloss enamel (I think that means it's oil based) paint from Behr. Only had the wall a month but it's held up well to being kicked so far with no chips or peeling. You should try to let the paint dry for a really long time (2+weeks) before bolting on your holds, otherwise your holds will stick to it and may peel off the paint if you move them.

Following up, I want to give a shout out to fellow MP user Kevin Stricker, who built my wall. Kevin is a local climber and contractor who has been building climbing walls for 20+ years. During the planning process he helped me think through angles, kickboard height, etc. He bought all the materials, drilled the panels to Kilter board spec, constructed the framing, and mounted the panels. He was super attentive to detail, making sure the wall had clearance over the doorway, making room for the LEDs behind the kickboard, etc. Given my concerns about my garage roof joists, he beefed up the framing with additional bracing into the wall studs.

In the end we went with a 35 degree 8x12 Kilter board. I couldn't be happier with the result. The wall is rock solid and also looks great. He used high quality Baltic birch plywood and screw in T nuts. I thought Kevin's pricing was very fair for the quality of the end product.

If anyone is interested you can email him at climbnkev@yahoo.com , his MP page has an album of some walls he has built too:

https://www.mountainproject.com/user/11054/kevin-stricker

Some pics of my wall: 

did you finish it?