Methodology

This page explains two things: how FitVilo researches and checks the guides on the site, and exactly how the interactive tools work. The short version is that the calculators are transparent models built partly on published figures and partly on editorial weights. They are not physical tests, and FitVilo runs no lab. Every number a tool uses is listed below, and each one is marked as either a published figure or a FitVilo editorial weight, so the output can be checked against what it is actually made of.

How a guide gets researched and checked

FitVilo is written and edited by Alex Reed, the editorial name used by the editor behind the site. The work that stands behind a guide is the reading: manufacturer specifications, product manuals, building and acoustic standards, official statistics, and reporting from established outlets, read against how a piece of gear or a routine behaves in a real apartment.

Before a number reaches a published page, it gets checked against a primary or official source where one exists. Floor-noise limits trace to national rules and standards bodies. Floor-load figures trace to building codes. Equipment dimensions trace to manufacturer product pages. When a guide leans on documentation rather than hands-on use, it says so plainly instead of dressing research up as first-hand testing. Dates, prices, and specifications drift, so each page carries an “updated” date that moves when an underlying figure changes.

How the calculators work

Each tool is a small, fixed model. It takes a few inputs, applies the figures listed here, and returns a result. The math is deliberately simple and visible. None of the tools store your inputs or send them anywhere; they compute in your browser as you type. A model is an estimate, not a measurement, and the right use is as a planning starting point, not a guarantee about your specific building.

Two of the four tools are pure arithmetic on numbers you supply. Two of them apply weights that FitVilo chose. The difference matters, so each tool below states which kind it is.

Apartment impact-risk planner

What this is: a heuristic planning score, not a dB prediction and not a compliance test. It does not estimate a decibel level, it cannot tell you whether your floor meets any building standard, and it has no way of knowing what your particular slab, ceiling, or neighbor is like. What it does is rank a workout plan against the handful of variables you can actually change, and name the one change that helps most.

The score itself is built from editorial weights on a 0-to-3 scale, not from acoustic measurements. Here is every one of them. The exercise type sets the base: static or mobility work 0, standing band work or set-down weights 1, dynamic floor work 2, jumping or running 3. A dense rubber mat, either 10 to 20 mm or 30 mm and over, subtracts 1; thin foam subtracts nothing. A session after roughly 10pm adds 1. Going barefoot during dynamic or jumping work adds 1. The total is clamped at zero and read as low (0 or below), medium (1 to 2), or high (3 or more). A ground-floor situation with no neighbor below always returns low, whatever else you select. The recommendation is picked by priority, leading with the case where no mat thickness makes the activity acceptable above a neighbor.

Those point values are FitVilo editorial judgments about apartment life. They are informed by published work but not derived from it, and no arithmetic in this tool converts any published figure into a score.

Three families of published numbers sit around the tool as context, and they are worth separating because they are not measures of the same thing and cannot be added together:

• Ground-reaction force describes the load a body puts into a floor, in multiples of bodyweight. Walking lands at roughly 1.0 to 1.5 times bodyweight per step and running at about 2.0 to 2.9, per Nilsson and Thorstensson (1989). This is a force ratio, not a sound level, and it is why jumping and running rank at the top of the exercise scale.
• Building performance limits describe what a separating floor is required to achieve as a construction element. Germany’s DIN 4109 caps impact sound at a separating floor near 50 dB. This rates the building, not your workout, and it says nothing about any individual exercise.
• Neighbour-noise legal limits describe what a resident is allowed to transmit. South Korea writes a legal direct-impact limit of 39 dB(A) by day and 34 dB(A) at night. This is a regulatory threshold in a specific country, measured a specific way, and it is quoted in the tool only to explain why the time of day matters.

A single-figure impact rating for a mat or covering, quoted by manufacturers as a delta-Lw improvement, is a fourth kind of number again: it describes what a covering removes under test conditions, not what remains in your neighbor’s ceiling. The tool names one such figure in its advice text as published context, and does not subtract it from anything.

If you need an actual decibel figure or a compliance answer for your building, this tool cannot give you either, and no free browser calculator can. That takes a measurement in the affected apartment.

What fits your clear floor zone

This tool takes the clear floor area you can spare and lists which home-gym options fit, naming the binding dimension for each that does not. It is a geometric comparison against published-typical figures, with no scoring.

The basis is published-typical use-envelope dimensions, in meters, for each option: mat or bodyweight 1.8 by 0.6, resistance bands 2.0 by 1.0, adjustable dumbbells with room to use 1.5 by 1.5, a folding bench with clearance 2.0 by 1.2, a foldable exercise bike use envelope 1.3 by 0.7, and a walking pad unfolded 1.4 by 0.55. An option fits when the shorter side of your zone clears the shorter required side and the longer side clears the longer required side. If you check the box for clearing the space after each session, bulky items that do not stow easily, a loaded dumbbell rack and a bike, are flagged as fitting in use but hard to clear.

Foldability time cost

This tool turns the time a piece of gear takes to set up and pack away into the hours per year you spend on the fold cycle, then applies an editorial friction rating. The two outputs are different kinds of thing, and the tool separates them.

The hours are a calculation. Per-cycle seconds is the seconds to unfold plus the seconds to fold. Minutes per year is the per-cycle seconds divided by 60, times sessions per week, times weeks per year (defaulting to 50). Hours per year is those minutes divided by 60, rounded to one decimal place. There are no invented coefficients anywhere in that chain, and the arithmetic is the whole model.

The friction band is a FitVilo editorial threshold. A per-cycle time of 120 seconds or more, or 10 or more hours a year, reads as high friction; 4 or more hours a year reads as moderate; anything below that reads as low. Those three cutoffs are editorial judgment about when a chore starts getting skipped. They are not research-derived, no study produced them, and a reader who thinks two minutes is a fine price for a folding bench is disagreeing with an opinion rather than with evidence.

Home setup vs gym membership

This tool finds the break-even point between a one-time home setup and an ongoing gym membership. It is pure arithmetic with no invented coefficients, and it is currency-neutral.

It takes your monthly membership, sessions per week, one-way commute minutes, commute cost per trip, and one-time equipment budget. Monthly commute cost is the per-trip cost times sessions per week times 4.33, the average number of weeks in a month. Monthly gym total adds that to the membership. Break-even months is the equipment budget divided by the monthly gym total, rounded up to a whole month, shown as a dash if the gym total is zero. Hours saved per year is sessions per week times 52 times the round-trip commute in hours. The three-year comparison sets the gym at its monthly total times 36 against the equipment budget, treated as a one-time cost over a three-year lifespan with no resale value counted. That lifespan is an assumption, and the tool states it.

The FitVilo Apartment Fit Score

The walking pad and treadmill dataset is a compiled record, not a test bench. Each row is built from a published manufacturer or retailer spec page, and that page is linked from the row itself. Every entry also carries the date the page was read, so a figure that later drifts can be traced back to what the source said on that day. FitVilo runs no lab and times no machines. Where a spec page does not list a value, the field is left empty rather than filled from memory, because a blank is honest and a guessed number is not.

The score attached to each row is the FitVilo Apartment Fit Score. It answers one question, which is how well a machine suits a small flat, and it is not a verdict on build quality, motor life, warranty, ride feel, or value. A machine that scores poorly here may be an excellent treadmill in a house with a spare room. This is not a lab score, a test result, or a rating anyone measured.

It is computed from four published numbers, each rescaled to a 0-to-1 range and then clamped. Folded height rewards a flat fold: 14 cm or less scores 1, 30 cm or more scores 0, and heights between fall on a straight line as (30 minus the height) divided by 16. Footprint uses the unfolded length times width in square meters: 0.8 or less scores 1, 1.5 or more scores 0, and the span between is (1.5 minus the area) divided by 0.7. Top speed stands in as an impact proxy, not a noise reading, because faster machines invite running and running drives far more force into a floor: 6 km/h or less scores 1, 16 km/h or more scores 0, and the middle is (16 minus the speed) divided by 10. Weight rewards portability: 30 kg or less scores 1, 90 kg or more scores 0, and the range between is (90 minus the weight) divided by 60.

The four factors carry fixed weights: folded height 0.30, footprint 0.25, top speed 0.25, and weight 0.20. The score is the weighted average times 100, rounded to a whole number. Those four weights, and the cutoffs above them, are FitVilo editorial judgments about what constrains an apartment, not measured coefficients. They are printed here rather than hidden in the code so a reader who weighs storage over speed can see exactly where the disagreement sits.

When a source omits a factor, that factor drops out and the remaining weights are rescaled to sum to 1, so a partial record is never penalised for a missing field. If two or more factors are missing, the row is flagged as partial. The row also names its dominant limiting factor, the available factor with the lowest rescaled value. These scores come from published numbers run through fixed arithmetic and fixed editorial weights. They are not physical test results.