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Flooring home gym

cork floor in a gym?

2 years ago

Pros/cons of putting a cork floor in a home gym? Will be installed by floor company so want best option, but not worries about diy. Thanks!

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Comments (7)

Steve Grimes
2 years ago
Cork probably wouldn't be durable enough for free weights or crossfit
Catherine Shively
2 years ago
Study floor and cover with the big rubber mats used for horse stalls.
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sams club from time to time has sold rubber interlocking tiles about 18 x 18. One side is colors and the other is lack. Its a good flooring for home gyms. They usually sell them as playroom carpet or similar.
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Cork Canvas or other cork floors with wood grain image?
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Has anyone installed Natural Cork's Everglade Oak floating cork floor, from their Cork Canvas line? Or any of their other Cork Canvas designs? Natural Cork - Canvas Plank I'm getting ready to rip up the old wall-to-wall carpet in my 1BR condo and put down a floating cork floor. The new floor will be for the the living room/dining room, bedroom and hallway -- everything except the kitchen and bathroom. There are several aspects of cork that I like, especially its sound-dampening qualities. The hard part has been finding a color and texture/pattern that I like -- not too dark or too light, not a busy pattern, no warm orange or red undertones. After many visits to the few local flooring stores that have good experience with cork, I've settled on Natural Cork's Everglade Oak. It's imprinted with an HD image of a wood grain in a gray-brown color. I didn't set out looking for a cork floor with a wood-grain image, but after considering the way the "real" cork color options look with my walls and furniture I think the Everglade Oak works best. My runner-up choices are Kilmartin Pine, also from the Cork Canvas collection, and Eco-Timber's Fumed Oak which is also a wood-image cork. The Fumed Oak is a good medium brown but I think Natural Cork's products look more authentic. The Kilmartin Pine looks good but is darker than I'd like. Before I pull the trigger, I'd love to hear about others' experiences with this product or even see photos of them installed, if you have any. Thanks!
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How to install cork underlayment beneath floating cork flooring
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Ok...From a former cork flooring professional, here is my advice. Loose lay the cork underlayment and then install the floating floor on top. Cork sheets provide less waste and are MUCH easier to install. You lay them down like a blanket and you are done. It is that simple. The 'glue' down is ONLY for a glue-down hardwood sitting on top. We call that a double stick. You do NOT need to get to that level. You have a floating floor. The 'perimeter glue' is for ROLLS of cork. Why? Because the roll always curls. Always. You will 'loose' the last 2-3 curls on the inside of the roll. That is ++ waste of an expensive and highly valuable product. Hence the reason builders prefer the sheets. Do NOT use tape - OF ANY KIND. Tape deteriorates and starts to make a CRINKLING sound. Imagine how annoying that would be. After 6 months your floor starts to make a noise like stepping on crumpled up newspaper! Not fun. Here's what you do: 1. Chose the DIRECTION of the plank for installation (north-south or east-west?) 2. Lay the sheets of cork in the OPPOSITE direction (ie. perpendicular) 2.a This is a good way of keeping long seams from lining up with long seams. You will create a brick pattern = always good building practices. 3. Like your floor, you will stagger the cork underlay joints. Butt the edges together (no tape) and keep going. That means if you start with a full sheet of underlay on your 1st row, you will start the 2ND row with a partial sheet...thus producing a brick-pattern for the underlayment. 4. Lay roughly 1/3 of the room with underlayment and then start installing your flooring. 5. The sheet underlayment can move a snick so you do not want to walk on it too much. Like laying ceramic tile, you work with a small amount of mortar/thinset while you set the tile. Cork underlayment is the same. You lay a little bit of underlayment (enough to 2-3 runs) then lay a little bit of flooring 6. Leave the 1/2" expansion gap at the wall JUST LIKE your cork floor needs. Both the underlayment and the floor need room for movement. This is super simple. Use your spacers at the wall WHILE you install the underlayment. Leave them there while you install the planks. It is that simple. If you float your flooring your cork sheet underlayment is floated as well. That's why this is SUPER simple. Installers love working with sheet cork. It is insanely simple and they still get to charge another $0.25/sf - $0.50/sf to lay it. Yet they hardly need to do a darn thing.
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Cork floor in gym (new build)
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We are exploring options for gym flooring in our new build. We have a treadmill, peloton, and dumbbells. I lift but not Olympic style/heavy lifting (ie Im not dropping super heavy weights on the floor). We would be laying the floor direct on concrete slab. Cork is appealing because of its durability, ‘softness’, and low toxicity. Anyone have good/bad experience and which specific product you used? Also is it necessary to reseal every few years? How difficult is this? That seems pretty inconvenient since we use the gym every day…
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SJ McCarthy
2 years ago
Sorry but Steve Grimes is incorrect. And Ms. Shively is suggesting a rubber product that is foul smelling and is not ranked for 'indoor' use.

Cork floating floor can be used. It is relatively cheap ($4 - $12/sf...depending on what you buy and the quality you choose to work with). As a cork flooring expert, I've helped put in floating cork (click together) AND glue-down cork tiles in home gyms AND professional gyms.

Cork can handle whatever you throw at it...it just depends on WHAT you want to throw at it. If you are doing power lifting with free weights (300+ pound clean and jerk???) then you want to work with 8mm glue down tiles = biggest baddest meanest most expensive cork floor on the market. Something like that will offer 150 YEARS of service...and counting.

If you want an elliptical trainer and a tread mill and a weight training station then work with a decent quality cork floating floor. That's all you need. The durability of the finish rides with the MANUFACTURER. Like every thing, not all cork floors are created equal. The big names have some big finishes with MASSIVE price tags. Those could be over kill for you...or it could be EXACTLY what you need.

Let us know a bit MORE about what you want in your gym, how big the floor space and if you want NOISE control as well. I'll keep an eye out for this thread to see if I can help narrow down your choices.

First...what are some of the BRANDS you are looking at right now?
PRO
ouge001
2 years ago
We are a company specializing in selling discount home fitness equipment.Recently, we have a lot of discounted products, and the discounts are very strong. Now it is very cost-effective to buy.We offer two purchase modes, order-based and retail, and order-based discounts are more powerful! Home Gym https://www.accprice.com/
Kaitlyn G
2 years ago
@SJ McCarthy, came across this thread. Looking at a new build home gym approx 140 sq ft. Will do Peloton, Treadmill, weights, and high impact activities like burpees, etc. What are the recommended brands?
T
last year
Hi, did you end up using cork flooring for the gym? How did it turn out? Looking to do the same.
K R
last year
I had a professional gym company come in and install indoor rubber flooring in our home gym. I don’t throw weights down, but I’m not being careful with dumbbells either. I like it a lot. You just need to damp mop it (or swifter) every once in a while to clean. (This was right after the install so it’s sandy from the installers’ shoes, we wear indoor sneakers in here so it never gets like this). No smell either.

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