Title 24 Requirements for Gyms and Fitness Centers
A gym is decided less by the workout floor than by the rooms around it. Table 120.1-B exhausts athletic locker rooms at twice the rate of ordinary ones and rates showers per showerhead, and a heated pool brings a mandatory section of its own.
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Locker rooms and showers set the exhaust
Table 120.1-B separates locker rooms for athletic or industrial facilities, at 0.50 cfm of exhaust per square foot, from all other locker rooms at 0.25. A gym's changing rooms are the first kind. Shower rooms are rated per showerhead instead — 20 cfm where the system runs continuously, 50 where it does not — and Section 120.1(c)4 makes those the design rates.
The workout floor is Class 2 air
Health club aerobics and weight rooms are listed at 10 people per 1,000 square feet with an area rate of 0.15 cfm per square foot; at that density the per-person and area terms come out equal. The air is Class 2, so it may not be recirculated or transferred into Class 1 spaces such as the lobby and offices, which shapes how many systems the building needs.
Demand control ventilation becomes mandatory where the design density, or the building code's egress load factor, reaches 25 people per 1,000 square feet and the system has an economizer, modulating outdoor air or more than 3,000 cfm. The table default is well below that, so for a group-exercise studio the question is which figure it is designed and permitted at.
A pool brings Section 110.4
Any pool heater must be certified, with an external on-off switch; outdoor heated pools need a cover; pools need directional inlets and a time switch on the circulation pumps. The heating source is regulated as well: for a nonresidential pool, solar collectors covering at least 65 per cent of the pool surface, a heat pump pool heater sized under Joint Appendix JA16, at least 60 per cent site renewable or recovered energy, or solar and heat pump together. Gas pool heaters may not have a continuously burning pilot.
Replacing the heater on an existing pool is excepted from the source rules — the Compliance Manual's own example is a gym replacing a failed gas pool heater like for like.
Lighting
Exercise and fitness areas are a category of their own in Table 140.6-C, and it carries no additional allowance of any kind — no decorative, display or task power on top. Locker rooms are a separate category. Restrooms need occupant sensing that switches the lighting off within 20 minutes of vacancy.
Where to go deeper
Showers make a gym one of the occupancies where service water heating is a real part of the scope. The ventilation calculation behind the floor rate is explained under commercial ventilation.