How to find out floor/ceiling strength?

Nine_Lives

We don't have our own place yet, but when we move out next year, with the budget that we'll have & what it'll get us, we'll be looking at having a spare room.

One idea i've had is a home gym. Nothing in depth, just some basics.

I go to the gym at a cost of about £400 or so per year. The same for my gf.
I generally avoid the weight section as you get all the stacked guys there & i'm far from this. I'd feel too uncomfortable. It's very easy to sit behind a PC monitor & say "just do it" though isn't it.
My gf is a bit hit & miss with the gym. She'll go some days, some days not. Then she'll complain she hates her weight/measurements, but then not go when she works pretty much next to the gym she visits.

In short we'll both benefit. We'll both do more & long term would save money.

My question is, all that equipment is weighty - how do you find the floor strength without sticking your equipment in, only for the floor to give way & find out that way.

Then there's the ceiling strength. I wouldn't mind something like a pull up bar (i know you can get them for doorways). I wouldn't want to pull the ceiling down & be on you've been framed.:rotfl:

will-he-payitoff

Whats the weight of the equipment?

Nine_Lives

I can't possibly answer that as we haven't moved out yet, and as such i haven't bought the equipment.

What i was wondering was how do you find out, other than just sticking it in the room & hoping for the best?

PasturesNew

A structural engineer would be able to tell you, but they're not cheap.

Personally I'd rather look at putting that sort of stuff in a garage or garden room.

ormus

a residential structure should be designed for a distributed load of 1.5kN/m2, and a point load of 1.4kN.
as a rule of thumb, 130kg per sq m will be ok.
you are very unlikely to exceed the max weight per domestic room, for the floor to give way.
esp near the edges where the joists are supported by the walls.

engineers usually build in a safety factor of 1.5 above any normal foreseen use.

Nine_Lives

Question is whether we can stretch to affording a house with a garage also - as that would mean with the houses around here, we'd have to raise the budget somewhat.

Right now i'm just trying to gather information beforehand. Thanks for the help.

ic

If you're in a terrace or semi detached, also consider your neighbours. Running machines, rowers and weights being placed down will enviably be noisy and will be the kind of noise that transfers through the building easily. As above, I'd only want this sort of stuff in a garage or conservatory - somewhere with a concrete floor.

Mistral001

There are ways of calculating it, but you need to know the size of the floor joists and the span of the floor. Older houses tend to have weaker floors than newer ones as when the Building regulations came in the 1960's all floors had to have a certain strength according to their use. They have to be designed to take a certain load as specified in the Building Regulations.

To meet Building Regulations requirements, a dwelling will have to be designed to take a certain floor loading and an office building will have to be designed to take different floor loading etc, etc. An office is designed to take over one and a half times the floor load of a dwelling and the floor of a gym which is classed along with drill halls and dance studios is designed to take over three times the load of a dwelling floor. So you are correct to assume that the floor of a house might not withstand being used as a gym.

However, using a dwelling with its floors only being designed for dwelling loads as a gym might not result in collapse of the floor if only used by one person and the equipment is light and you will have to use your judgement based on the number of people using the floor as a gym and the weight of the equipment.

Many house designers will design floors which are much stronger than the minimum required under the Building Regulations as the cost of the extra timber is quite minimal and the advantages of not having rattling wardrobe doors as you walk across a bedroom are quite important to many people. Also nowadays designers assume that people will have home offices with heavy filing cabinets etc. in houses nowadays and will design the floors stronger accordingly. These are usually bespoke houses and you rarely get floors exceeding minimum standards in housing developments.

However, in saying that many older houses which were build before the Building regulations came into existence have floors which have strengths far below the Building regulations minimum standards. Also houses which have been built without central heating but later have had it installed couldhave had their floors weakened by notching of the joists to install central heating pipes (two inch notches in joists of say 8 inches deep can weaken a floor by over 40% for example).