Home Gym Flooring or Mats Suggestion- on carpet

[BuffMonkey]

Hi all!

I recently moved and am setting up my home gym - a bench, squat stand, power tower, treadmill and dumbells/barbells. Nothing too hectic.
My basement is carpeted and really wanted to find some sort of flooring or mats on the carpet for my gym area (6 ft x 13.6ft), for a number of purposes:


-To protect the carpet from dirty feet, shoes, sweat etc.
-To protect the carpet from the machines making permanent imprints
-To protect carpet fibers going into the treadmill and damaging it

Any suggestions on what to use that doesn't cost half the price of my gym equipment that will work for those purposes?

Thanks for the help! :help

PS: I am in BC, so Ontario exclusive stores won't work (unless they ship for reasonable rates)!

[tiramisu]

What I did was to look up tire/rubber recyclers in my city and purchase 3/4" - 6'x4' Horse stall mats.
Buying them from the source is much cheaper than at a sporting goods store.

[BuffMonkey]

What I did was to look up tire/rubber recyclers in my city and purchase 3/4" - 6'x4' Horse stall mats.
Buying them from the source is much cheaper than at a sporting goods store.

Thanks for the suggestion! I ended up getting large 6' x 12' rubber mats from a local gym equipment store. They are AWESOME! They are thick, you can drop weights on it no problem, they are simple to clean, soft on feet and leaves no marks on the underlying carpet. Only issue is them moving around a little, but if you leave heavy enough equipment on them, it works fine. Would highly recommend, even though they weren't too cheap. You can't compare these mats to that soft squishy/foam mats...those won't work.