Need some punching bag assistance

[Eigenvector]

So I posted a little bit ago about hanging a punching bag from the rafters. I have the bag on a fixture mounted to 2 rafter beams (the rafters are roof trusses, 2x6's). The bag is a 110lb bag, hanging from an eyebolt . The issue that I'm seeing is that when I punch the bag, the whole ceiling is moving. I don't mean shifting off its mounts of course, but rather I can see the ceiling drywall moving back and forth and rocking in tempo with the bag.

It's not like I'm Rocky Balboa or someone, but I'm a pretty strong guy and

110lbs is a lot of weight. So I'm looking for some advice/options for my concerns. My concerns being that I'm afraid that if the ceiling is moving enough for me to see, that means the whole structure is under way more stress that it can take. But what to do about an object that weighs that much but has to hang from 9 feet in the air. The rafters in my house are at exactly the right height.

Could I build up the rafters at the location where its suspended, add a second 2x6, add a lot more cross bracing between the two rafters its hung from, something like that. Admittedly I didn't do a lot of mod to the hanging point, not knowing how it would respond I chose to take it slow and see if this was feasible or not.

Right now the eyebolt is hanging from 2 2x4's with a 1/2 plywood sheet on top across 2 rafter beams. I believe MeatPlow offered that suggestion up last time I posted this. Give a little more effort I could make a better suspension jig, maybe 3 2x4's (hole for eyebolt in middle board), 1/2 plywood to tie them together on top.

I don't know, what do you all think?

[BobK207]

EV-

last time you posted I told about my experience with a heavy bag hung from a patio cover with 2x4 joists....when my kids (10 & 14) & friends punched it the patio cover shuddered & shook. By the time they were

14 & 18 they have become less interested in it until it bit the dust when a friend tried to ride it.

If the patio cover had been drywalled I'm sure I would have been much more concerned.

You your case I'd be concerned about working that drywall and the drywall to ceiling joist connection.

Sistering extra 2x6's might be helpful but I thnk having a mechanism for the trusses to share the load is more important.

Since you ceiling / roof framing is a truss system let's use the proper terminology......the bottom member or bottom chord is the 2x6 that the drywall ceiling is nailed to?

I would block between adjacent bottom chords, I would screw a plywood skin to the top edges of the blocking & the top faces of the the truss bottoms chords. I suggest using screws because oyu can remove the system if desired and you'll get a tight more secure assembly with screws rather than nails.

I would suggest #10's ~2" long (min)

Spreading the load over three trusses that have their bottom chords blocked. will really help the situation.

I don't know how long or wide a plywood strip you can install but you might consider stiffening the plywood with 2x4 in the "across the trusses" deirection. The screws into the bottom chords wiil stiffen the plywood in the other direction.

If you're feeling confident you might consider construction adhesive but that make it very difficult to modify or remove the retrofit.

cheers Bob

[Jack]

Even though the bag is 110 lbs, its going to 'jump' when you hit it. You can put a heavy-bag spring between the bag chains and the connection to the rafters, but in my experience, it doesn't help that much. . Mounting a heavy bag on the rafters seems to be the worse way to do this. You get drywall cracks, and it shakes the whole house. I am only speaking from experience. Trust me on the bag 'jumping' . I went with something like this

The thing is lagged into a concrete wall in the basement. No house shaking at all. Or you could go with a free standing heavy bag hanger, but those things take up a ton of room and are not that stable.

[Proctologically Violated©®]

What you did so far sounds good.

Are you saying your attic is sheetrocked?? So you have vertical sides, and

*then* an A-frame? In my house, the A starts at the attic floor, with no over-head rafters.

If the sheetrock is moving, that would indicate poor or non-existent bracing at various 90 corners, or where the A-frame commences. Bracing, gussetting, bracketing, or whatever one calls it would help. What you want to brace is not just between parallel rafters/joists (which can help), but the connection between the floor and any vertical members, and/or the angle between vertical members and the ensuing A-frame. IOW, you probably need to brace the house structure itself, on either side of the bag.

Does your house creak/move in a strong wind? :)

But before you do all this, as you suggested, hanging the bag higher would absolutely help, bec. a longer chain will inherently reduce lateral forces. In fact, the longer the chain, the better, in any circumstance. Perhaps even from the peak of the roof, where A-frame joists meet?

A sufficiently long chain will allow positioning the height of the bag so that you strike the "center of percussion", which will also greatly reduce lateral forces, as will a longer/softer spring. This is the ideal positioning of a bag.

The longer the chain is, that will position the center of percussion at the right height, the better--makes for a longer "softer" pendulum. A longer/softer spring will have the bag move more vertically, but also offers reduced lateral forces, *and* also reduced vertical forces.

If you can't reach the peak or if that idea is just untenable, go as high as you can go, with some kind of simple box/truss above the rafters. You might consider bolting a set of rafters higher than the existing set, and using those to support the bag. This in itself would offer additional lateral bracing. And, there are ways to do this with just sheetrock screws, so that minimal damage/weakening occurs to the original beams, with plates. These are standard fare at HD, altho they may not fit exactly if certain angles are involved, but in principle you could use them.

It's also possible to build, pretty simply, a 2x2 or 2x4 frame for the bag support, and have *that* attached to the joists with heavy springs, which would further reduce lateral stresses. But, I think a higher support point/longer chain/longer/softer spring offers the same force reduction, more simply.

If you hang the bag higher etc, and the sheetrock *still* visibly moves, then I think you may have some issues with the house construction itself, and might want to consider some internal bracing at the sides/corners, regardless of the bag issue.

email me if you want to fax me some sketches, which would help nail down a good solution.. Just remove the munge.

[Eigenvector]

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message news:jquii.16$ [e-mail]...

Whoops, sorry I credited your advice to MeatPlow. It was you who first suggested the stringer bracing. Sorry about that, least I can do is give credit where it is due.

As to your further suggestions, I'll have to work on them some other day, I seem to have caught some loathsome plague or another and won't be doing anything but popping Sudafed until it leave me alone.

But yeah my house could be better constructed, but its solid enough. I suspect the placement of the bag might be exaggerating the problem, its right on the end of the garage where there isn't a lot of framing or walls to support the trusses.

[Eigenvector]

I took a closer look at this today after work and I'll definitely need to do some more bracing. I really don't think the attic is meant to be walked on in my house, the whole structure moves when I'm up there - not much of course. I know that at least one or two top plates for the exterior walls are rotted from a roof leak and subsequent water leak before I bought it and yes it's in the garage with the bag. So when I redo the drywall where the water leak was I can take a closer look at the top plate and see if its servicable. At that time I can install some braces.

Its a punching bag people!!!! I didn't expect it to destroy my framing.

As to your question about my attic, no its just a bunch of A frames, nothing fancy.

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message news:jquii.16$ [e-mail]...

[Pat]

I'll assume that you've already looked at all of the free-standing supports and ruled them out for one reason or another.

I'm not quite sure, but it appears that you have mounted the bag to the horizontal part of the joist and it has given you just the right height. But by making a solid connection you are transferring the energy from you bag to the joist. The joists aren't really pretty flexible and that's what's moving.

You might want to consider hooking the bag to a rope and hooking the rope to a rafter that is supporting the roofing. That will allow the bag to have more movement (swinging) and get rid of a the jarring aspect of the punch. It will get rid of the "hard" contact between the bag and the support. Plus, the rafters are more stable.

/ \\ / | \\ / | \\ / | \\ | B A G

Good luck with it.

[Eigenvector]

The more I look at this scenario the more I wonder if a stand would in fact be a the best I could hope for.

My attic is an A frame truss, that is with 2x6's nailed to a ridgepole, and a single 1x8 connecting each 2x6, plus a 2x6 ceiling beam. That's just not an inherently stable configuration especially for jarring loads.

I'm gonna go ahead and try the rope trick, see what that will do for me but I'm thinking my best hope is to get a stand - otherwise I might be faced with a big leak in my roof from the stresses.

[Eigenvector]

So just to close this out.

Based on the ideas that you all passed my way I've finally got that sucker up there and am using it.

BTW: Hitting a punching bag for 15-20 minutes is TOUGH, my arms feel like they're gonna drop off.

Anyway, so basically what I had to do was place stringers between the ceiling joists to about the 2nd one over from the hanging point (5 joists are tied together with stringers), from there I also placed joist to rafter stringers to tie the ceiling to the roof. It was after placing the stringers to the rafters that the ceiling finally stopped moving

At this point I might go back up and add a second collar to the rafters, strengthening those joints, then add another stringer set from the middle of the joist span to the rafter