The Two “Treadmill Desk” Office Update #1

Just a quick update to mention that the new treadmill desk arrived this morning, ahead of schedule, and is now being assembled at the office.

Once the treadmill is finished, I will take some pictures and post a quick how-to on the progress of the desk building. Hopefully that will go as smoothly and come Monday morning the employee using it will be able to just hop on to their new desk and get straight to work.

For this particular treadmill desk I am only outfitting it with a single 21” LCD monitor as it will only be used with an IBM ThinkPad as the main computer.

I will still put the treadmill on its own surge suppressed power strip, and the computer, monitor and other electronics on a separate APC uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to protect everything from power surges and other electrical problems.

My biggest concern at this time is the two treadmills being on the same electrical circuit at the office. The amount of power being drawn by the treadmill motors may cause issues and I will need to have an electrician work some magic if I find that the treadmills are drawing too much power.

The user of the new treadmill desk will be keeping a log of their time, weight and distance walked on the treadmill and has kindly agreed to let me post those details over the coming months.

At this time, the new treadmill desk will not be the only desk that the end user will have. They will still have a regular sit-down desk to work at should they find that they need to do so. The data that I will be interested in, is whether the user will increase the amount of time that they use the treadmill desk for as they become more used to it. Personally I believe they will but it remains to be seen if this actually happens. I am also predicting that it will be a couple of months before any discernible health benefits become apparent.