Garden shed to use as gym - suggestions?

Gem+Dave+Kaci

We're just about to move into a house with a nice big garden and I was hoping to buy and build a shed in the garden and use it as a home-gym.

I've seen a nice big shed online at a pretty decent price (http://www.shedstore.co.uk/itemdetl.php/itemprcd/cou106grd) and I'd definitely have an alarm fitted and make sure whatever home insurance I go for covers shed contents as the house is in a pretty quiet area but it backs on to an alleyway.

Has anyone here built one of these themselves and does anyone here use a shed structure as a home-gym? Are they difficult to build?!?

Thanks in advance for your help!!

Madstuthe1st

With most shed they come so you have just got to put the four walls up and roof on. I done a couple but I would recommend that you have 3 people to make it easy for yourself, can be done with 2. You would need to do the base first, I'm guessing with the equipment you would have in there, you will want to have a concrete base.

Don't know what size you are thinking of having, I know that gym equipment takes up a lot of room as our garage has become our gym and most of it folds to save space.

Another thing to think about is that you will need power to the shed. Which you would need to get priced up unless your an electrician.

aliasojo

How many pieces of exercise equipment do you intend having? A 6' wide shed would really only accommodate machines or equipment on one side as you'd have to leave room to move.

We have a 10' x 12' Waltons shed which cost us £600 at the time and it was the poorest quality shed I have ever owned in my life. Wood was split, the framing was poorly made and didn't meet - we had to cut bits off and add bits on to erect the thing. The quality of the wood used was questionable and they'd used the smallest spec they could get away with. We bought extra slats to reinforce the floor etc.

We had painted it before we erected it otherwise I wouldn't have gone ahead with building the thing. We took loads of pictures and sent them off with a complaint and the company agreed it was shoddy work and offered to replace. As we had pretty much fixed it all ourselves by then, it was too much hassle to dismantle and erect a new one so we settled for a £100 cheque instead.

We also had ordered an 8' x 6' shed from them to use as a playhouse for our daughter and it too arrived and was poor quality. It got returned immediately and we got one from a different company (can't remember the name offhand) and it was much much better quality than the Waltons one. I would not buy another from them even although their customer service was good.

That's not to say all their products will be like this, but if I were you, I'd try to see a Waltons shed in person if possible to judge the quality for yourself.

Gem+Dave+Kaci

Thanks for the comments.

I think we'll be going for the one shown above so it'll be 10 ft by 6 ft which should be plenty. All of equipment I've got folds up for storage so it shouldn't be a problem.

Sorry to hear about your experience with Waltons aliasojo! According to the website all their sheds come with a 10 year guarantee so I'll make sure I have a good look over it before I build it and I'll get it changed if I need to. I will try to see one if I can though. Homebase and B&Q sell them so hopefully one of those will have one ready built that I can go and have a look at.

As for the power, I'll have to figure that one out when I gert to it. I was hoping to run an extension lead along the fence from the house but obviously that might not be totally safe so I'll have to find out how much other options are. I have seen a few solar powered lightss on another website which seem quite cheap. I wouldn't really need mains power so that might be a better option.

Madstuthe1st

Don't know if this is any interest to you, but have found the following website which is free plans to build your own shed. Lots of other free plans as well.
http://www.buildeazy.com/shed_1.html

Good luck whichever way you decide to go

slobbery

We did this last year. Our shed was modular construction and is 15ft long and 9ft wide.
One of the things to be aware of is that the equipment may fit ok, but you need room to use it as well - stretching legs/arms out etc.
If you have heavy equipment as we have (electric treadmill, gym quality bike etc) then the floor will almost certainly not be able to take the weight. We had to put a lot of extra bearers under ours. Headroom can also be a problem. We had to place the treadmill so that our heads were directly under the highest point because where the walls meet the roof, it is not high enough to stand up fully, and once you are up higher on the treadmill or bike, your head can hit the ceiling.
The main thing I would say is that unless you insulate well (as we did) it will be too hot to use in summer and too cold in winter. Ours is insulated and wall boarded and has 4 windows and double doors that open but still got very hot in the summer. We ran electricity from the house and put in several sockets and spotlights (and a tv ariel so i could watch freeview whilst exercising!).
All in all it looks great, and worked well until 18 year old daughter fell out with her Dad (having left home to live with him 6 months earlier!) and moved into it. So we now have no gym but a really nice bedroom in the garden! :rotfl: