plywood and pads, money and money i dont have

[thicks]

I was wondering if there is a specific type of plywood that works best for indoor walls. 3/4'' Spruce with one side finished good enough?

I was also wondering about the general specs/size/cost for the large crash mats in the Fredericton gym?

Third, any good suggestions for light flooring for use all over the floor in a gym. My idea was something along the lines of wrestling matts because they are easy to store (gym space would theoretically be shared, so flooring should be removable.) ideas?

And lastly Metolius suggests costing out plywood for a new gym, and doubling that number for a general idea of total building supply costs. Does that sound reasonalbe to those of you who have already paid off your home climbingwall debts?

thicks

[Fred]

I was wondering if there is a specific type of plywood that works best for indoor walls. 3/4'' Spruce with one side finished good enough?

that's the stuff

And lastly Metolius suggests costing out plywood for a new gym, and doubling that number for a general idea of total building supply costs. Does that sound reasonalbe to those of you who have already paid off your home climbingwall debts?

That would certainly be conservative for your estimate. Remember, you can return any unused materials. In my experience though, there is a lot less waste than what metolius is suggesting, provided you know what you are doing of couse.

[chossmonkey]

Our wall is largely made from recycled walls so I don't know how much our total cost would be. Doubling the cost of plywood would get you close, but I think you might come up short depending on how you build it. For phase one and two of our new wall we bought 7 sheets of plywood for about $190. Framing lumber was around $82. Then you still need to buy screws (I think we used 3 boxes at around $15 each) to assemble it and T-nuts. Lee Valley has the cheapest (still heavy duty) T-nuts we could find at $11.50 for 100. We used around 150 per panel, less on the bottom sections where we mainly use screw-on jibs.

Our wall was super easy to build because we were able to use existing framing for the most part to build off of. It was also not very tall and not very steep so we could get away with 2x4's for most of the new framing. I also already had some lumber to recycle into the new wall. The price goes up as you need bigger lumber for steeper, taller walls and if you need to do addional framing to support the wall.

[saF]

I spent about $1000 on my home wall. It is about 9 1/2 sheets of plywood with a 35 degree and a 15 degree wall. And I put in a LOT of T-nuts, over 2000 I think, unless I lost a full bag or 2 someplace. And I used thick wood for my structure, 10" & 8" for the sloped walls and roof. I think I went through 4 boxes of screw, too.

You can see some pics here http://www.flickr.com/photos/fergusonsa/sets/72157594417655767/

saF

[Stef]

Try going to a carpet store and asking for discarded carpet and underlay for the flooring. They often pull huge amounts of the stuff out of office buildings and are more than happy to give it away free.

Cheers,

S.

[granite_grrl]

We got one matress on the yahoo message board for freecycling, we probobly could get more too if I kept a better eye over there.

There seems to be a board for most areas, you should find it pretty quick from a search engine.

[chossmonkey]

We got one matress on the yahoo message board for freecycling, we probobly could get more too if I kept a better eye over there.

There seems to be a board for most areas, you should find it pretty quick from a search engine.

We also recycled the carpet we ripped out from the rooms upstairs. Most of the floor under our wall has 1-3 layers of carpet pad and 1-2 layers of carpet. Not really easily moveable like you were looking for but if you push the matresses and pads out of the way there is a pretty good sized usable area witha really soft floor.

[Zamboni]

The blue gym pads, and the removable floors the wrestlers use are about ten times more expensive than you might think.

[martha]

The big awesome wrestling mats that we have for the UNB gym for under the big overhang sections came in at about $800. not too bad considering that they last forever and are awesome to land on...but crazy expensive for a home gym.

[dcentral]

Booo wrestling mats.

If you are looking for something to put down that's pretty cheap and movable unlike a wrestling mat. Buy some of those puzzle piece foam mats from Home Depot. You could probably stack a couple of layers as well.

[thicks]

The big awesome wrestling mats that we have for the UNB gym for under the big overhang sections came in at about $800. not too bad considering that they last forever and are awesome to land on...but crazy expensive for a home gym.

Contact?

Thanks for the suggestions, the floor is going to have to be completely removed and replaced anytime the gym is open so carpet and undercarpet foam might not be the most efficient. This may sound like a huge pain but the location has very much to offer in otherways, that more than makes up for this. I guess expensive might be the only trade off.
thanks for the info and all suggestions are still welcome.
thicks

[Fred]

I think Martha meant to say gymnastic mats not wrestling mats. We are talking the 1.5 foot thick puppies that you can land from 20ft up no problem.

[martha]

I think Martha meant to say gymnastic mats not wrestling mats. We are talking the 1.5 foot thick puppies that you can land from 20ft up no problem.

Yes, that is what I meant to say!

Tyler... email Bowles. He has the contact info for the pads.