My Treadmill Desk Specs
Posted by Kip at August 9, 2008 6:33 PM 
Categories: treadmill desk,Tread Desk - Thoughts on the Company,desk for treadmill desk
Categories: treadmill desk,Tread Desk - Thoughts on the Company,desk for treadmill desk
Since I'm having to build my own treadmill desk, I decided to build it to suit my needs. There are a couple of considerations:
1. The treadmill - I bought the treadmill from TreadDesk.com for $695. I could have used the treadmill I already had but it has arms and a huge display panel. I couldn't put a desk around the treadmill and comfortably use the keyboard. Plus, the large display panel forced the monitor too far away. The one from Tread Desk doesn't have any arms and has a small control panel that sits on your desk. If you want to see pictures of what it looks like, you can click here.
2. The chair - because I might not want to use the treadmill all the time I need to have space for a chair. Standard office chairs aren't wide enough to fit over treadmills so rather than move the treadmill everytime I want to sit at my desk I need to make sure the desk is wide enough to ensure there's enough room at the desk for a chair.
3. I have a hard time working in a cluttered environment and don't like to see a bunch of tangled cords running everywhere or to have the electrical components like the cpu visible.
So, here are the desk specs I came up with:
Width 72 inches, Depth 24 inches, Height 48 inches. It will have a keyboard tray and an enclosed cabinet with 3 shelves - one for my printer, one for my fax and one for my cpu. There will be slight openings at the interior side of the cabinet for air to flow and the shelves in the cabinet will be only 20 inches deep so the cords can run up the back, hidden from view. There will be a small grommet in the desk for the monitor cords. There will also be a keyboard tray. It's important that the keyboard tray be really steady so it doesn't wobble with the treadmill movement.
My drawing skills are about as good as my carpentry skills but here's what my spec drawing looks like:
I'm putting an ad on Craiglist for a carpenter to build it for me. Stay tuned for how it goes ....
1. The treadmill - I bought the treadmill from TreadDesk.com for $695. I could have used the treadmill I already had but it has arms and a huge display panel. I couldn't put a desk around the treadmill and comfortably use the keyboard. Plus, the large display panel forced the monitor too far away. The one from Tread Desk doesn't have any arms and has a small control panel that sits on your desk. If you want to see pictures of what it looks like, you can click here.
2. The chair - because I might not want to use the treadmill all the time I need to have space for a chair. Standard office chairs aren't wide enough to fit over treadmills so rather than move the treadmill everytime I want to sit at my desk I need to make sure the desk is wide enough to ensure there's enough room at the desk for a chair.
3. I have a hard time working in a cluttered environment and don't like to see a bunch of tangled cords running everywhere or to have the electrical components like the cpu visible.
So, here are the desk specs I came up with:
Width 72 inches, Depth 24 inches, Height 48 inches. It will have a keyboard tray and an enclosed cabinet with 3 shelves - one for my printer, one for my fax and one for my cpu. There will be slight openings at the interior side of the cabinet for air to flow and the shelves in the cabinet will be only 20 inches deep so the cords can run up the back, hidden from view. There will be a small grommet in the desk for the monitor cords. There will also be a keyboard tray. It's important that the keyboard tray be really steady so it doesn't wobble with the treadmill movement.
My drawing skills are about as good as my carpentry skills but here's what my spec drawing looks like:
I'm putting an ad on Craiglist for a carpenter to build it for me. Stay tuned for how it goes ....
I'm planning to use the same treadmill (I don't have one already) so I'm interested in your impressions of the unit. My current thought is to use an adjustable height workstation (best bet so far - the SOHO 4 shelf station that global has for < $250.) I'll need to be sure it's stable enough but so far it looks like it.
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Is this the one you mean? It looks nice. I like the fact that it locks in place. That should help with the stability. The one thing I'm not sure of is the shelf at the bottom. Do you think it would put you too far away from the keyboard since the front of the treadmill would be up against the bottom shelf which, depending on how big the front part of the treadmill is, would mean you are standing further back from the desk walking? I haven't opened the tread yet (was waiting on the desk) but if you want I can measure and see how far back the front part goes.
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That's the one. I don't anticipate the distance back being an issue - if you look at the pictures on TreadDesk's website you see the motor housing coming almost out to the edge of the desk. If it is a problem I'd plan to remove that shelf or space it up to place it above the motor housing.
When you get to unpacking it, it would be nice to know the height and length of the motor housing section just to give me an idea of how much I'd have to raise the shelf if I wanted to try to clear it. Maybe just use the little plastic desk raisers that you see around on ergonomic websites.
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I think you're right about the length of the motor housing but I will give you the measurments when I unpack it so you can know for sure. I probably won't unpack it for a day or two. I'm in the midst of re-organizing my office and changing things around. What started out as such a simple project has turned into a total room makeover.
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I think you should be fine. The motor housing section is pretty narrow. The measurements are 12" deep and 24" wide.
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Now that some months have passed, what has been your experience with the desk from cnnsupply.com combined with the treadmill from Tread Desk?
The reviews indicate the desk is wobbly. Has this been a problem?
http://www.csnsupply.com/asp/show_detail.asp?sku=MY1129&PiID=527434&refid=DT4-MY1129_527434
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I didn't get that desk. I had someone build one for me. I never could find one available for sale that I liked and that was affordable. The treadmill is still working great.
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