We just moved into our first house, and the wife and I are planning to use an extra bedroom as a training room/my home office. Currently, we have really nice carpet installed in all the bedrooms upstairs. Because this is not our forever home, we wanted to keep the carpet in the training room (in lieu of ripping it out and running rubber mats on the subfloor). What we’re considering is laying down plywood across the whole room on top of the carpet then laying down stall mats (or something comparable). I’m concerned about the risk of moisture being trapped under the plywood and ruining the carpet. Any eloquent ways to hedge against the risk? Or is the risk really not that big?
Can’t answer your real question but another thing to consider. Those stall mats stink for a bit, usually. That smell would probably get engrained into carpet. I’d kind of think plywood would do the same. Smells are hard to get out or carpet. At that point you might as well rip up the carpet now.
Carpet is cheap, either use it and replace it when you put the house on the market or rip it up now.
If you get stall mats then leave them out in the sun for a couple weeks. Scrub them with dish soap a few times and there will be no noticeable smell.
Why not just set up your house the way you want to live in it and let the buyers deal with it later? You’re not going to gut the price of your house by changing the flooring in one room.
We have foam tiles under our treadmill and another mat under our bike in the spare bedroom over carpet. I don’t use it as much as my wife but carpet is way better if you are doing weights even if you have a yoga mat. Much softer. But we are not really concerned about the carpet since we are planning on being here for a long time. But as someone else said if the carpet smells you can rip it up before you list it or get a good cleaning to get any smell out. Keep it cheap and simple and just add foam tiles or something.
What type of training are you doing?
I would just put mats on top of the carpet with bike and trainer on top. Cycleops has some good ones that I used for years on carpet, fairly thin. All the sweat stays on the mat and is easily wiped up, no smell.
For weight training I suppose it depends on exactly what you’re doing, but I have a workout room in my basement now with vinyl plank flooring and I end up doing a lot of exercises on the carpet (sometimes with a towel down if in sweaty) in the next room anyway for comfort so I don’t think it’s too bad to just have carpet for strength stuff.
Just put mats down under the equipment. Plan on replacing the carpet when you move. As others said, carpet is cheap.