Me and my girlfriend have just bought our very first house and get the keys on Monday. Due to her being sick and tired of my constant pestering, she has agreed I can convert the garage into my very own paincave, where only triathlon items are allowed.
What are must haves?
The biggest issue I have at present is the garage is not directly connected to the house. It is in a separate garage block about 50m from my house. So at present I am not sure what the electricity situation is going to be. Preferably I would want a big tv and plugs for laptops etc. On top of this, is there anyway of getting wifi out to the garage?
Next thing is actual stuff. I basically don’t have a lot of ideas past sticking my turbo in there. What about matting? Reckon a rubber matting floor will be better, provide a better surface to sit the turbo on then what is likely to be a poor brush finished concrete.
Someone out there must have some uber gagety pain room and I want to copy, so what are your best ideas?
There are wifi range extenders of various types and complexity that can shoot a wifi signal pretty far (way farther than 50m). If your cheapo basic off the shelf extenders won’t work, contact an IT expert and it will be doable but will cost a couple hundred dollars if you have to hire someone.
The simplest thing may be to just run an Ethernet cable out there yourself from the house and put a second router in the garage. (I think you can just bury that type of cable if it is outdoor rated a couple inches under the ground but check on that) .
Might as well replace your little home router with a business/enterprise version. Set it up once, never touch it again.
Matting doesn’t really matter. Besides bare floor is better for bike maintenance, oil spills, perspiration, etc…
So you have a turbo. Do you want to use CT or Zwift? If so, is a laptop/tablet screen adequate, or do you want a big screen? If latter you’ll need a… big screen mounted in there.
I have a wall mounted TV, my laptop, three fans, and a small cabinet in ours. We keep extra towels, snacks, Allen wrench in the cabinet so we have most of what we’d need right there during a workout.
I did the same project last summer. I had a garage about 30m away.
I had to dig a 3 foot deep trench the whole way to run electricity. The previous circuit was not enough for heating, treadmill and “stuff”.
I redid concrete floors then covered with large rubber mats
I did run ethernet and cable TV in the trench but did not require them. I ended up putting a WIFI extender that picks up wifi signal from the house and then distributes it through the garage with LAN plugs/cables and wifi. It also allows for an external antenna which I didn’t end up needing.
I ended up using a slingbox to transmit TV over wifi. If you can’t get TV to the garage this may be a solution.
I put a dedicated 20 amp circuit for a treadmill which I don’t have.
My pain cave is functional but excellent. I don’t live in a snowy climate, so I can put it all in the garage instead of the cars.
I’ve got:
Sole F80 treadmill - excellent.
Heavy duty tripod stand with a 32" LCD Roku TV with wireless internet for netflix, etc. for the TM
Bike on Kickr with a separate 28" monitor setup for Sufferfest run on my laptop with a the monitor for larger screen display
Jaybird Bluetooth headphones. (I’ve killed like 4 of 'em but they’ve been excellent about honoring the no-sweat warrantee replacement.)
One big Lasko floor fan - nothing too fancy, but it works plenty fine (I sweat a lot!)
Tons of towels for me
And my not-so-secrete weapon, my Vasa trainer. When I want to go long on it, I just put the 32" TV on the ground (it’s super light, easy to move) and watch it there. I actually look forward to 60-90 minute Vasa sessions for the strong muscular endurance effects - I just wish I could do more of 'em (young kid makes it tough to do any sort of working out without feeling guilty, so swimming gets the most compromise.)
I only have basic rubber mats, but am toying with the idea of getting more.
The only thing I don’t have but wish I had (and will probably invest in one soon if I find a good one) is a remote control for my fan to turn it on/off or at different speeds, since it’s cold when I start in the winter, but after 10’ of warmup, I’m already sweating enough to take off all my layers and fire up the fan.
i’m having my house in london renovated and I am having cat 5/6 cable run through out because i’ve previously tried WiFi boosters with limited success but tagging a second router on has been a much better solution.
I would, if you can, hard wire the router in.
My own pain cave has treadmill, vasa, kickr and concept 2
If you can, it may be easier to run a few cat 6 cables to the garage and put a Ubiquiti Unifi access point in the garage. I have 5 of those in my house and they have been working flawlessly for the last 6 months
I saw in your pictures these nice frames with a finishing medal and picture. I wanted to ask if you did it your self or if there is a company that does this?