Garden Gyms, Insulated, Powered and Fully Installed

Why choose a Garden Gym?

The gym you actually go to

Most people do not stop training because they run out of motivation. They stop because the gym is a twenty minute round trip before you have lifted anything, and in January that is enough.

A gym at the end of the garden removes the journey, the membership, the wait for a squat rack and the question of whether it is worth going for forty minutes. It is also, unlike a garage conversion, warm, dry, plastered and properly lit, which is the difference between a room you train in and a room you keep meaning to train in.

Size it around the equipment, not the floor area

Square metres are misleading for a gym, because what you need is clear space around the kit rather than total area. A rough guide:

• View 3, 3.2m x 3m, from £24,500. Bike or rower, a mat, adjustable dumbbells and a bench. A complete setup for conditioning and general strength, and the size most people actually need.
• View 5, 5m x 3m, 15m², from £36,100. A rack with a bench and a bar, plus a cardio machine and floor space to warm up without moving something first. This is the size to choose if you barbell train.
• View 7, 7m x 3m, 21m², from £44,100. Rack, cardio, a matted floor area and room for a second person, or for sled work along the length.

A 2.2m barbell needs roughly a metre clear at each end to load plates comfortably, which is the measurement that catches people out. If you use a full length bar, the 3m depth is the number to plan around.

The floor, and what to tell us before you order

This is the question to ask any garden building supplier, and most of them avoid it.

The buildings sit on ground screw foundations rather than a concrete slab. Ground screws are included in the price, work on almost all surfaces, level a sloping garden and can be installed in any weather. For the great majority of home gym setups, meaning a rack, a bench, dumbbells and a cardio machine, it is not something you need to think about.

Where it does need a conversation is heavy loading: a fully loaded rack, stacked bumper plates in one corner, or dropping deadlifts from height. If that is how you train, tell us at the free site survey. It is a specification question we can answer properly for your setup, and it is far better answered before the order than after the building is up.

Heat, air and the winter problem

An uninsulated garden gym is unusable for four months of the year and quietly rusts your equipment for the other eight. Condensation is what kills bars, plates and cable machines, and it comes from warm damp air meeting a cold surface.

Every building is fully insulated with SMART heating panels as standard, so the room holds a steady temperature rather than swinging with the weather. That is the single biggest thing you can do to protect equipment kept outside the house. Because the heating can be set in advance, the room is warm when you get to it rather than after you have finished.

Training generates a lot of moisture, so plan to air the room after sessions, and raise ventilation with us at the survey if you train hard or use the space daily.

Power for the equipment you own

Pre-wired before it arrives, with a minimum of three flush fit electrical sockets, three ethernet sockets and a domestic fuse box of its own.

The ethernet is more useful in a gym than it sounds. Connected bikes, rowers, treadmills and streamed classes are exactly the equipment that stutters on garden Wi-Fi, and a wired connection solves it outright. If you know where the treadmill and the screen are going, say so before installation and the sockets can be positioned to suit.

Planning, cost and how long it takes

A garden gym used by your own household is an outbuilding incidental to the house, so in most cases it does not need planning permission. The exceptions are the usual ones: listed buildings, conservation areas and other designated land, flats rather than houses, covering more than half the garden, or siting it forward of the main elevation of the house. We check all of it at the survey. If you intend to train paying clients in it, that is a change of use and a different conversation, so tell us early.

Prices start at £24,500 and include delivery, the ground screw foundations, installation by our own team rather than subcontractors, cedar cladding, the plastered and painted interior, flooring, LED lighting, heating and the electrics. Our installers are on site for around seven days.