Walls – Mount Pull-up bar from wall to wall

mountingwalls

Walls are 7-feet apart. For the bar, I am using metal pipe about an inch two inches in diameter. What is the best way to mount an end of the bar to the face of the wall?

(PS: Very similar question here: DIY door frame pull-up bar but I am looking specifically to attach the ends of the bar to a brick or concrete wall.)

Best Answer

  • Note: I am not an engineer, and I haven't done any kind of load calculations on the recommendations below. I did some somewhat related research on how to hang a 100LB heavy bag (punching bag) from a wall (just one wall). Initially I was thinking about using pipe and a pipe floor flange, but I decided that a pipe attached to a wall was not going to be sufficient to deal with the forces exerted by a 100LB bag swinging. Most heavy bag hangers (aka wall mounts) use tube steel construction, with the tube fastened to the wall at multiple points, which is a lot stronger.

This question is a little different because you'll be able to support both ends of the pipe, so the pipe should be able to support more weight.

I think it would be helpful to break this down into parts:

A. Hardware/Mount to attach the pipe to

B. Fasteners for attaching the mount to the wall


A. Hardware / Mount

i) You could use different pipe fittings (like a 'pipe floor flange', google that to see what it looks like if you are not familiar) and threaded pipe to build a good, strong setup.

The problem with the flange is that the holes that they provide for fasteners/screws are pretty small. More on this in part B because this is about fasteners

ii) You could just get a thick block of wood (e.g. 4x material, so 3.5" thick ), and drill 1.75" holes into it to accommodate the pipe, and then attach the block of wood to the wall with fasteners of some kind (see part B). If you wanted to be able to remove the bar from the block, make one hole deeper than the other

iii) You could get 2x wood material, and create a channel for the pipe. Imagine something in the shape of a U, so you would put the bar/pipe in from the top. It wouldn't be secured but if you wanted it to be you could probably figure an easy way to secure the top of the U (e.g. a sliding block). Similar to the above, you would make sure that the wood material is large enough that it gives you space to drill fasteners through it into the concrete/brick wall

B. Fasteners

For attaching things to concrete/brick, you can use things like:

i) Anchors ii) Tapcon screws iii) Threaded rods, bolts/nuts, epoxy, like the Simpson Adhesive Anchoring System:

http://www.strongtie.com/products/anchorsystems/adhesives/adhesive_anchoring_install.html

So I think the best thing to do is figure out: a) how big a pipe you will use, making sure that they have a pipe floor flange in that size b) how big the fasteners are that will fit in the pipe flange, and if you think they'll be strong enough c) if you don't want to attach the flange directly to the concrete/brick wall, you could go with the wood mounting options, which would give you a lot more area to install whatever fastener you want

long answer, but hope it helps