Fitting gym equipment to brick wall

daivid

I've been asked to fit a trx trainer to a brick wall pics below 


My concern is not fixing to the brick, rather that the wall may get damaged.

In use the load will be down and away from the wall so my plan is to fix a piece of wood across about 7 bricks vertically then fix the trx to the wood.  Does thai make sense?

What I don't want is a brick or bricks pulled out of the wall, so was thinking of using a relatively weak fixing to the brick. A brown wall plug into every other brick across the 7. I figure if the wood does pull away from the wall it won't do completely or all in one go, so should be a safe strategy. Comments and suggestions welcome.

d0nkeyk0ng

If the wood falls away, it will be under tension so whoever is using the equipment may be injured. I’m the kind of guy who would go overboard and use masonary bolts

daivid

d0nkeyk0ng said:

If the wood falls away, it will be under tension so whoever is using the equipment may be injured. I’m the kind of guy who would go overboard and use masonary bolts

If there is sudden and catastrophic failing of the fixings yes, with my plan of four separate fixings to the wall I think this would be mitigated (with regular inspection). The top fixings would need to be pulled out before the bottom ones came under significant load. My concern with masonry bolts is I don't want the fixing so strong the bricks would/could be pulled out, maybe I'm being over cautious in this regard.

stuart45

Doubt if you would pull the bricks out of the wall. 

daivid

stuart45 said:

Doubt if you would pull the bricks out of the wall. 

Is that on a single brick or with the load spread across several as planned?

stuart45

Is the load near the top of an unrestrained wall?

daivid

Its an internal wall (garage to house) with plenty of wall above 10+ courses above likely fixing point.

Murmansk

I'm a big fan of resin fixings for things like this. 

I can't imagine you'd ever exert enough force to pull a brick out of a wall - it'd be more likely you'd pull the wall down - but you'd probably need to attach a steel cable to the back of a truck and drive the truck forwards. 

stuart45

It's more likely that the fixings would give in before the brickwork pulled out.
If the load was at the top it would be different.
The wall looks pretty solid built with concrete bricks.

Section62

Murmansk said:

I can't imagine you'd ever exert enough force to pull a brick out of a wall - it'd be more likely you'd pull the wall down - but you'd probably need to attach a steel cable to the back of a truck and drive the truck forwards. 

There's a big difference between a static load and the kind of dynamic loading that gym equipment can impose - cyclic loading and loads being imposed/removed suddenly involve forces that domestic masonry walls are not normally designed to deal with.

That said, this wall looks reasonably well built, and the mass from 10 courses above the attachment point should make it unlikely that a brick would be pulled out of this wall just from the use of gym equipment.  This wouldn't necessarily apply to other walls and in different load cases.

Eldi_Dos

@daivid, if wanting to go for a belt and braces approach get some slotted channel strut and attach to the wall with rawl bolts in two or three places with a substantial rubber washer at rear of strut. Then attach equipment with spring channel nuts and rubber washers.