Major Projects How To Create A Home Gym

Date Published:

28/05/2008

How To Create A Home Gym

If you want to get toned up, why not join film stars Kate Beckinsale and Ralph Fiennes by investing in a home gym?

By Mark Ramuz

Fitting It In

It sounds grand, but building a room for this purpose or fitting out a spare room with a few essential pieces of equipment can be done for less than £5,000. That's not bad when you consider the high cost of gym membership and the extra time and motivation to drag yourself away from the TV to get there...

How Big a Space Do I Need?

All you need is a room around 3x4m or more to give you room for the equipment and a stretch. Good ventilation is the key factor when choosing the room. This may be a case of leaving a window and door ajar to create a through draught. In warm rooms with no windows, you may need a wall or ceiling fan. In extreme cases, air conditioning units are now more energy efficient as long as they are installed in the best location. CoolEasy have some solutions.

Alter a Spare Room

If you are lucky enough to have more bedrooms than you need, a spare one is an obvious space. Failing that, you could partition off part of a large bedroom or living area so that you still have useable space that isn't part of the gym. Ask a local builder to build a stud partition wall across the area. Costs start from around £750. Health 2 Fitness can plan the conversion and install equipment.

If you are nervous about partitioning permanently, a large folding screen will hide your home gym (no one wants to look at the equipment when they're not exercising, after all). You can have one of these made out of mdf - or buy ready-to-paint kits from Jali.

Basement or Garage Conversion?

Both are obvious locations for a home gym. You don't have to go to the expense of extending heating into these spaces, but you may want to have a small shower enclosure built into one corner, for which you'll need to comply to building regs.

The compact versions only take up a 750mm square footprint but you will need to budget for plumbing and connecting the waste to your main drains. Garages are usually near the main drain anyway but a basement may need a pumped system to get rid of the water. Saniflo can fit their Sanishower in a tiny space or even under the shower tray. The enclosure will also need an extraction fan connected to an external wall.