Home Climbing wall 10x10 vs 8x12

Anybody have any experience climbing on a 10x10 training board (i.e kilter homewall) vs 8x12 board (i.e tension/moon/grasshopper/decoy board)?  I am just curious what pros/cons you might have found with the sizing of each or which size you prefer and why.

Are you building a spray wall or a moon/equivalent board?

If you have the room for it then I think 12’ is the optimal height for a home climbing wall. It’s essentially an extra vertical move vs 1-2 more horizontal moves. I used to have a full sized adjustable moonboard and a couple of 12’ tall crack machines. Doing lapse was more fun than on a shorter board  I prefer moving up than more traversing  

That said the higher the wall the more padding and the more potential for tweaking something when you fall off. In my new place I opted for the moonboard mini (one of the smallest “boards”) due to space constraints and it is doing the job just fine. But I do miss the opportunity to do bigger moves and/or more vertical moves. More exciting IMO. 

8x12 uses 3 full sheets of plywood without cutting or wasting expensive materials.

Zachary Winters wrote:

8x12 uses 3 full sheets of plywood without cutting or wasting expensive materials.

+1 for not cutting sheets of plywood. saves you from needing a skil saw or a table saw

Thank you for the input!  That definitely settles the question for me.

To answer the first question > moon/equivalent board.

I'd go for a full moonboard then. Easy to build and the holds themselves are, while not cheap, more affordable than eg. Kilter ones. Also you won't need the leds, so thats a cost saving measure as well.

Moonboard sets are significantly cheaper than Kilter, Tension, or Grasshopper. There's a new Tension Board being announced this week, so see what that is. 8 feet wide is definitely simpler since it's 1 or 2 sheets of plywood with no cutting. Moonboard also has the largest pool of problems currently

If you can fit an 8x12 or a 10x12 why don’t you just build a 10x12? If you can make this work you could have a system wall like moonboard or tension board and room for other climbs or campus rungs (if it butts up against a wall). I’m assuming there is a reason you can do 10x12 though and vote for 8x12. 

Yes, go for 10x12 if you can.  Build the biggest wall that fits.  The cost of an extra sheet or two of plywood is very small compared to the overall cost of a wall.  I never understood the argument to make a wall only with whole sheets.  Seems very shortsighted.  

Regarding saws, I used a $20 hand saw for all the cuts when building my home wall, including 8' long cuts on plywood.  No big deal.