Thinking of opening a gym, I have a couple of friends who are carpenters for a living, spend their days framing houses so it seems like the cheapest/easiest/best thing would be to get them to frame the walls using 2x6's and plywood, make some nice features, and use grip paint.

What's the advantage of going with a company like rockwerks or eldorado? It looks like it would be much more expensive, for something that doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult to design and construct? And seems like it would be much much much more expensive for textured walls that are more "rock like" and realistic. I haven't climbed any of those walls yet but it seems to me like those would just make route setting much more limited, since there'd be all these footholds everywhere, and you'd be limited by the size of hold you could install. These textured walls must also get awfully dirty as well with all their nooks and crannies?

What do you all think, what's the best type/material? Any downside to all wood construction?

Thinking of opening a gym, I have a couple of friends who are carpenters for a living, spend their days framing houses so it seems like the cheapest/easiest/best thing would be to get them to frame the walls using 2x6's and plywood, make some nice features, and use grip paint.

What's the advantage of going with a company like rockwerks or eldorado? It looks like it would be much more expensive, for something that doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult to design and construct? And seems like it would be much much much more expensive for textured walls that are more "rock like" and realistic. I haven't climbed any of those walls yet but it seems to me like those would just make route setting much more limited, since there'd be all these footholds everywhere, and you'd be limited by the size of hold you could install. These textured walls must also get awfully dirty as well with all their nooks and crannies?

What do you all think, what's the best type/material? Any downside to all wood construction?

I've been to a gym that's all wood, 2x4 and 2x6 construction anchored into concrete walls and steel I beams, 45' walls. We'd have to look at the cost of steel frame but I can't imagine it's any cheaper material wise, and being able to frame in wood ourselves would be a huge savings in labour. So flat panels seems to be unanimous, as far as what to spray the panels with, what's the best material on the market these days?

as for flat panel finishing coats, it seems the choices are paint with sand that would need to be recoated every few years, or sprayed concrete which is super durable, is there anything else worth considering?

and regarding simulated rock, no one seems to be a fan of it, but what about for a beginner section? say a single free standing spire? 5.5/5.6 routes don't ever really need to be reset, so it's perfect for beginners, and could put some harder routes on it that don't to be changed often either, they'd just get climbed when people move up a level or for beginners that want to push themselves early on.

thoughts? thanks!

Since you said you are planning on setting by hold color, please take the time to read this thread off routesetter.com (especially Sloperslapper's posts) first.

http://www.routesetter.com/...routes-by-hold-color

I started out in a set by color gym first, and was more than happy to leave it behind for creativity reasons. Now that I work in gyms with tape, I try to keep certain colors away from each other to help color blind people. Considering I sometimes have trouble telling the difference between hold colors when they get coated in chalk, I can't imagine what it's like for them. Maybe do both if you're doing it for aesthetics? Same color holds, with a similar color tape for when the holds get caked?

I've climbed in gyms all over the country. If the gym has a high volume of customers, the holds will get dirty, very dirty. Now, I'm assuming a route turnover of 2-3 months. Faster than that and the customers start getting pissy about it, and you are there for them. Green and yellow caked in chalk look the same. There's more than a financial reason the majority of gyms use tape.

Out of curiosity, what is your current gym? I'd like to look it up to see pics.

I am the head setter at a gym and we have this, i like it for the most part, but the gym is getting a little older now (ten years so not to old) and we are having chunks of this stuff starting to rip off. I think if you fix it right away its not a big deal but don't let it go to far.

As for "anything else worth considering"... look at what Walltopia can do (they did both Momentum in SLC and Stone Summit in Atlanta). From their web-site you can see how they do their construction which is completely different than the US companies do, and certainly not something that you'll do on your own.

Also, you should attend the CWA conference next month.

http://www.climbingwallindustry.org/

I don't find these guys all that useful to be honest.

Bare walls with lots of holds are much more cost effective than an eldo wall. But if you want realistic climbing that means you need the feet to resemble the stuff you climb on outdoors. Modular holds simply suck at duplicating outdoor foot holds or intermediates. Even lots of tiny screw-ons aren't very realistic and they soon polish to glass and are very unpleasant to climb on. A textured, featured eldo wall can give you some realistic moves but you can't change it and it costs a fortune for fixed realism you quickly get bored with.

There is an alternative. Rockpads - see photo. Joe's Valley - HP-40 quality sticky sandstone features that you screw on. The sticky sandstone feature is surrounded by a slick, no step poly outer forcing the climber to step into the feature and not blindly step down on the hold-wall join.

If you have ever watched a gym-learned climber use their feet they don't even bother to look at the hold. They just put their feet above the hold and slide it down to the join. When these climbers get outside they are clueless as to what actually constitutes a foothold and how to use it.

Rockpads not only provide amazingly realistic feet but also realistic crimps, edges, slopers and cracks for your hands. With a bunch of these you can turn a simple plywood vertical wall into something really fun and realistic to climb on. In fact - a simple plywood wall with a "gloss" paint finish and lots of these will give the most realistic climbing experience possible inside.

Now, I have a few questions - as a prospective gym owner how much would you be willing to pay for these things and does anyone want to try some of these things out as I am looking for beta testers?

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