I have volunteered to head up an improvement project at my gun club and need some help with berm construction. I really don’t know what my options are for safe and budget conscious construction. I need a 120’ long 5’ high barrier between the rifle range and 2 possible pistol/carbine bays that doesn’t have a large footprint.
Any thoughts?
Call it a “sporting berm” and you’ll be GTG.
How about the “Great Wall of Fudd”, or the “Wall of Antilitigiousness”?
I’m lost (nothing new and not the T.V. show) are you looking
for idea’s on how to build one?
Like finding local construction that needs a place to dump their fill dirt
or place a craigslist ad looking for “fill dirt” you never know you much get lucky
or shave the ground and make some of your own but for a berm your going to
NEED a lot, tons even.
I’d LOVe to see pic’s of your super-berm when it gets finished.
(super berm cuz it stops speeding bullets… lol)
do what the we do in the desert…
metal ‘baskets’ with canvas bags in them and fill-em up…
I can’t just pile dirt in this location as it is also the roadway out to the 200 and 400 meter ranges. I need a wall, not a 25’ wide dirt pile and I don’t know what my options for construction type are.
How about something like this: http://www.inter-block.com/
two rows spaced the proper distance apart… fill the void between them with soil.
Sorry - no clue on cost, but that is what the “bay” divders are made with at the local club.
Interesting stuff. Here’s a link to the manufacturer: http://www.hesco.com/US_CIVIL/index.html
I would suggest higher than 5’ if you can. We did 5’ at our range in MT and we still had strays going over the top from the pistol range and the rifle and trap shooters were complaing about hearing the whizzes over head.
Probably need to check your local zoning laws, but typically for every 3 feet of width you can have 1 foot of elevation.
I was thinking the same thing
Check the NRA site. They have a pretty good site for range building with minimum height’s and thickness’s for different heights. Not sure what they would consider minimum for a side berm, but, if I remember correctly, for an end wall berm it was 12’ tall minimum and I think the base was supposed to be the same width as the total height.
Those are a definite possibility.
Could you build two parallel walls with cinder blocks and concrete, say 12" apart and fill between them with soil? Seems like that should work. I mean, you don’t need to stop RPGs, just the errant pistol and rifle round, right?
these are only to be dividers for bays, and not backstops (but need to stop bullets)?
Check this site out, it might provide some info to you that could be helpful:
Hesco’s are awesome. Sort of like building a man sized sand castle.
Also try the old FM 5-103 Survivability. Google it. It has lot’s of designs for bunkers, berms and other fortifications.
not the prettiest thing, but have seen it work in other places. Drive posts into the ground then stack tires on the posts (fill each tire with sand). use a double row, staggered. easy to replace tires if they get too shot up. keep some spray paint handy to help with the appearance. good luck
For that length and height you are going to need A LOT of material. Tires sound like a good idea since they will be easy to come by because it costs money to dump them. Old railroad ties can be found, even if semi rotted they can make a retaining wall/walls that can be filled with dirt.
Kinda depends on how nice it needs to look, and how much you can spend.
If this is a barrier between bays that it sounds like, cinder block would be your best bet for size, but you’re going to want at least 7’, not 5. 90 blocks ($180) per 8" row.
They use this exact same setup at Ben Avery in Phoenix. (Site I found with a bad pic) It cut down on errant rounds, but the walls eventually get ate up around the 50-75yrd line because pistol shooters on the ends with targets close in tend to shoot into them quite a bit. The range rule there was that they always put pistols towards the center if possible.