Gym Fit-Out Cost Philippines 2026: Floor Loads, Fire Exits, Showers

The rubber goes down last, but the question under it comes first: what was this floor designed to carry? Illustrative photo.

Short answer: a gym fit-out starts from the same published 2026 commercial bands as any other fit-out, about ₱10,000 to ₱20,000 per sqm basic and ₱20,000 to ₱35,000 mid-range, then adds lines an office never needs: thick rubber in the free-weight zone, lifting platforms, showers, more aircon, and a dedicated circuit for every treadmill. A 200 sqm mid-range gym lands around ₱5.3M to ₱9.4M in fit-out works before equipment. The bigger risk isn't the budget. It's the floor. NSCP 2015 puts gymnasiums with the assembly areas at 4.8 kPa, twice the 2.4 kPa an office floor was designed for, and the Fire Code counts a gym at 1.4 m² per person, so a modest room is legally a place of assembly with the exits and alarms that go with it.

The calculator below turns your unit size and layout into a cost band, a Fire Code occupant load, an aircon figure and a floor-load warning. The sections after it explain where each number comes from.

1. Where the Money Goes

A gym is mostly open floor, so it can sit lower in the fit-out band than a clinic or a restaurant with the same area. What pushes it back up is a short list of items that other tenants don't have. Keep the two layers separate when you compare quotes: the base fit-out, then the gym lines.

Those bands are the published 2026 figures (Alphabuild's Manila fit-out guide, with J.I. Raymundo Builders giving a ₱20,000–35,000 planning range in the same place) that our office, clinic and restaurant and retail guides also use. They include partitions, flooring, ceilings, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, fire systems and painting. Gym equipment is not in them, and neither is anything below.

The rubber rate is a full supply-and-install figure, not a difference, so if your contractor deletes the base floor finish under the rubber, knock that off. The structural check is not on this list because it isn't a construction line. Strengthening, if the check calls for it, can cost more than all the gym lines put together, which is the reason to do the check before you sign the lease rather than after.

2. Can the Floor Take a Gym?

This is the question almost nobody asks the landlord, and it's the one with the biggest downside. Every floor in a Philippine building was designed for a minimum live load from NSCP 2015 Table 205-1, picked for the use the designer expected. When the use changes, the load the floor has to carry changes with it.

The table doesn't have a row called "gym". It doesn't need one. Note 3 to the table says assembly areas include such occupancies as dance halls, drill rooms, gymnasiums, playgrounds, plazas and terraces generally accessible to the public. That puts a gym under item 3, assembly areas:

An open gym floor has no fixed seats and no stage, so the 4.8 kPa rows are the ones that fit. Someone will point at the 3.6 kPa "similar recreational areas" line instead. We don't, because the note names gymnasiums outright, and a floor full of racks and dropped plates is harder on a slab than a poolroom.

Now compare. A building designed as offices had to carry 2.4 kPa. A gym needs at least 4.8 kPa. That's double, on a floor that may already be decades old. A former retail floor was designed to 4.8 kPa and looks fine on paper, but the uniform load is only the start:

• Section 205.3.1 says that where the actual live load will be greater than the value in Table 205-1, the actual live load shall be used, and special provisions shall be made for machine and apparatus loads. A plate tree holding 300 kg on about 0.5 m² puts roughly 5.9 kPa on that spot (300 × 9.81 ÷ 0.5 ÷ 1,000). A loaded dumbbell rack along one wall does the same over a longer strip. Those are real loads, and they go in the check at their real weight.
• Section 206.3 says the table loads include allowance for ordinary impact, and that provision shall be made for uses and loads that involve unusual vibration and impact forces. A dropped barbell is not ordinary impact. Section 3 below covers it.
• Mezzanines are the worst case. A light steel or timber mezzanine built for storage or offices should not get free weights without an engineer's sign-off, full stop. Our mezzanine guide walks through how those are checked.

The check itself needs the building's as-built structural drawings: slab thickness and reinforcement, beam sizes, spans and the design live load the original engineer used. Many landlords have them. If they don't, the floor has to be assessed on site. Either way, it's a few days of an engineer's time against a lease you'll be paying for years. Our NSCP dead and live loads guide explains the table in more depth.

3. Dropped Weights, Rubber and Platforms

No Philippine code gives you a number for a dropped dumbbell, which is exactly why Section 206.3 leaves it to the designer. The physics is simple enough to show why the flooring matters. A falling weight arrives with energy equal to its mass times gravity times the drop height. The floor has to stop it over some distance. The shorter that distance, the bigger the force.

Take a 100 kg barbell dropped from about 1 m after a deadlift. That's roughly 981 joules (100 × 9.81 × 1.0). As a rough average, force is energy divided by stopping distance. Stop it in 5 mm and the average force is around 196 kN. Stop it in 25 mm and it's around 39 kN. Real impacts are messier than this, since bumper plates bounce and the load spreads unevenly, so treat these as orders of magnitude, not design values. The point stands: every millimetre of give in the rubber and the platform is force the slab never sees.

How we set up a free-weight floor, as practice rather than code:

• Rubber everywhere weights live, not just under the racks. Dumbbells get dropped next to the bench, not on the mat you planned. We typically plan 15 to 30 mm commercial rubber tiles for the free-weight zone and thinner rolls for the cardio and stretching areas.
• Platforms where barbells get dropped: a raised deck of layered plywood with rubber drop zones on each side, sized so the plates land on rubber, not on the timber. Add one platform per rack that will see Olympic lifts or heavy deadlifts.
• Heavy zones over beams and columns, not in the middle of a slab span. Where the building allows it, we put plate storage, racks and platforms along the beam lines, where the slab is stiffest. The figure in Section 4 shows the idea.
• A house rule on drops. The floor design assumes controlled drops from the heights you told the engineer. A "no dropping dumbbells" sign costs nothing and protects the slab and the tenant below.

4. Vibration From Classes and Treadmills

A floor can be strong enough and still feel wrong. Twenty people jumping in time during a group class push the floor at a steady rhythm. If that rhythm lines up with the floor's own natural bounce, the movement builds up. The slab won't fail, but the tenant downstairs will hear it, feel it and complain, and the landlord will call you, not them. Rows of treadmills do the same thing more quietly, all day.

Section 206.3 covers this in one line: provision shall be made for uses that involve unusual vibration. The practical answers are layout answers. Put group-class studios on the ground floor or over the stiffest part of an upper floor. Keep them away from long, thin slab spans. Put treadmills on isolation pads. And have the engineer look at the floor's stiffness, not just its strength, when the check is done.

5. Aircon and Ventilation

People exercising are small heaters that also sweat. The heat-gain table in the ASHRAE Fundamentals handbook (the 1997 edition, Chapter 28, Table 3, as reproduced in CED Engineering's cooling-load course) puts the numbers side by side:

One person working out gives off about four times the heat of one person at a desk, and about two-thirds of it is latent heat, meaning moisture. That second number is the one that ruins gyms. An aircon sized only on floor area will hit the temperature on the thermostat while the room stays sticky, the mirrors fog and the rubber smells. The unit needs capacity for moisture removal, and the room needs fresh air coming in and stale air going out, not just recirculated cold air.

The calculator sizes the gym at 650 Btu/h per m² for the envelope (inside the 500–800 Btu/h per m² working range in our aircon tonnage guide), plus 1,800 Btu/h for each person on the floor at the busiest hour. We plan the peak at about one user per 6 m² of workout floor, which is an AEDO planning figure, not the Fire Code number. Then it compares that with an office of the same size at the Fire Code's 9.3 m² per person for business use and 420 Btu/h each, and prices only the difference. For a 200 m² unit the gap is close to 4 TR. A Professional Mechanical Engineer should run the real load calculation before you buy units.

If the budget says fans instead of aircon, the ventilation matters even more: big, slow ceiling fans for air movement, exhaust fans high on the wall where the hot air collects, and a clear path for outside air to come in low. Put the cardio machines where that air actually moves.

6. Showers, Lockers and Plumbing

Showers are where a gym fit-out turns into a plumbing job, and on an upper floor, into a structural one as well. A few things we plan for:

• Drains through the slab. New shower and floor drains on an upper floor mean coring the slab. Cores have to miss the beams and the main reinforcement, so they're located from the structural drawings, not from where the architect would like the shower. Group the wet rooms near existing plumbing risers where possible.
• Waterproofing that protects the tenant below. A shower leak in a gym on the second floor becomes a ceiling stain in somebody else's shop. The shower floor needs a proper waterproof pan turned up the walls, tested before tiling. Our National Plumbing Code guide covers the plumbing rules.
• Hot water and water supply. Several showers running after the evening rush is a real draw on the building's supply and on whatever heats the water. Ask the landlord what the unit's water connection can deliver before you promise hot showers.
• A licensed plumber on the drawings. RA 1378, the Plumbing Law, licenses the Master Plumber; the plumbing permit set needs one.

How many showers? We didn't find a Philippine fixture rule written for gyms that we could read and cite, so the calculator uses an AEDO planning count: two per locker room (one male, one female) for every 150 m² of workout floor, with at least two in total. Your Master Plumber and the Building Official have the final word on fixture counts.

7. Treadmills and the Electrical Load

A commercial treadmill is a motor that starts and stops under load all day. Manufacturers commonly specify a dedicated circuit for each one, and the installation manual for your model is the document to follow. Eight treadmills in a row are eight circuits back to the panel, which is often more than an ex-office unit's panel has spare.

Add the extra aircon from Section 5 and a gym can outgrow the unit's electrical service. Before you order machines, ask the landlord for the unit's service rating and have an electrical engineer compare it with your load schedule. Our electrical service sizing guide shows how that load schedule is built. The calculator prices the circuits only; a service or transformer upgrade is a separate conversation with the landlord and the utility.

8. Fire Code: Occupant Load and Exits

This is where a gym surprises people. The 2019 Revised IRR of RA 9514, the Fire Code, counts people for exit design by dividing floor area by an occupant load factor, and it names gymnasiums directly. Section 10.2.8.1 B covers an assembly area of less concentrated use such as a conference room, dining room, drinking establishment, exhibit room, gymnasium or lounge: 1.4 m² per person of net floor area. An office under Section 10.2.16.1 C is counted at 9.3 m² per person. The same room, used as a gym, holds more than six times the people on paper.

The RIRR has no separate row for an equipment-filled fitness room, and Section 10.2.5.2 D says the occupant load is the maximum number of persons that may be in the space at any time, as determined by the Fire Marshal having jurisdiction. Plan the exits for 1.4 m² unless your City or Municipal Fire Marshal agrees otherwise in writing.

Once the count reaches 50, the gym is an assembly occupancy (Division 3, which lists gymnasiums among assembly occupancies used for gathering fifty or more persons). What that brings, from Divisions 5 and 8 of the RIRR:

Two of these catch gym owners on upper floors. The turnstile rule (§10.2.8.2 F.2): no turnstile or access gate may be installed in a way that interferes with the required exits, so the membership gate at reception can't be the only way out. And the stair: a 150 m² workout floor is about 108 people, which needs about 820 mm of stair width at 7.6 mm each, and every stair still has to be at least 915 mm. A building with one narrow stair up to your unit may not work at all. Our fire exit and egress guide works through the stair math, and the FSIC guide covers the inspection you'll need for the business permit.

9. Change of Occupancy and Permits

The Fire Code isn't the only place a gym changes category. Under Rule VII, Section 701 of the 2004 Revised IRR of PD 1096, Group H covers assembly other than Group I: Division 3 is any assembly building without a stage and with an occupant load of less than 300, and Division 2 is 300 or more. Shops and offices sit in Group E. So most gyms moving into a shop or office unit are a change of group.

Section 702 is short and firm. No change shall be made in the character of occupancy that would place the building in a different division or group unless the building is made to comply with the Code's requirements for that division or group. The easier route in its second sentence, approval by the Building Official for a use in another group, only applies where the new use is less hazardous, based on life and fire risk, than the existing one. A room counted at 1.4 m² per person is hard to argue as less hazardous than an office at 9.3.

Skipping it has a price. Section 212 lets the Secretary impose administrative fines of up to ₱10,000 for, among other things, a change in the existing use or occupancy classification without the corresponding Certificate of Change of Use, and for use of a building without a Certificate of Occupancy. The fine is the small part. The bigger cost is a gym that can't get its business permit renewed. See our change of occupancy guide for the certificate sequence and our commercial fit-out permit guide for the building permit side. The landlord's own fit-out approval runs in parallel, as our tenant fit-out guide explains.

10. Accessibility Under BP 344

A gym open to the public is a building people with disabilities will use, and BP 344 applies. The two items that most often come up in a fit-out:

• An accessible toilet in the CR block. The 2024 Revised IRR puts the 1,800 × 1,800 mm turning space outside the cubicle, and the grab bar top at 750 mm above the floor. Our accessible toilet guide has the full layout.
• Getting to the floor at all. An upper-floor gym reached only by stairs is a problem. For existing buildings the IRR asks for compliance where feasible, judged by cost and structural impact, rather than a blanket retrofit. It is not a free pass: first violations under RA 7277 Section 46 carry fines of ₱50,000 to ₱100,000. Our BP 344 guide explains how the feasibility test works.

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