The Right Place For the Gym Electrical Outlets

We've had a few blogs that go over the electrical requirements of the equipment, and how that dictates a lot of how the room will be set out.

 

But something we haven't really talked about is the location of the cords for most fitness equipment, and what this means for locating the outlets.

 

Nearly all fitness equipment has either six or eight-foot cords with their equipment. And nearly all treadmills at ellipticals, as well as most bikes, have the cords coming out of the front of the equipment.  What does this mean for cord management?

 

And some ellipticals are rear access while others have side access, but at least you can put an elliptical machine very close to a wall behind it. However, treadmills especially can't be abutted to a wall behind them. The back of a treadmill really needs 3 ft of safety space to be compliant. I think we've all seen the pictures of people falling off the back of a treadmill and ending up hitting a wall and falling back onto a moving treadmill, which is where the actual injuries really happen.

 

Since most treadmills are pretty long, especially modern ones or commercial models, you can't run the cord all the way underneath it and then plug it into the wall. It has to be plugged in in front of the machine almost always.  And this means cord management issues, with trip hazards and frankly a messy look.

 

So for best practices of cord management, if you're designing from the ground up, the best thing to be able to do is to get a floor receptacle set in place just in front of the treadmills or the ellipticals.  

 

It's the last thing a builder wants to hear, especially if we are making a basement gym and they have to run a channel, but nearly every time we design a gym from the ground up, it's always much better for cord management and just the general neatness and feel of the room to have a floor receptacle set up ahead of time.

 

That's why people come to us when they're designing the fitness rooms. Because otherwise they find out far too late and they end up with messy cords everywhere.

Let us help you design your gym!