In this episode of DIY Network’s “Man Caves”, Host Tony “Goose” Siragusa travels to Hoboken, New Jersey to meet with real life heroes. The firefighters of Hoboken risk their lives on a daily basis and needed a retreat from their hectic and stressful work. While a fire station may seem like a natural Man Cave, this Man Cave had seen better days and looked more like a dungeon with rusty weights. The equipment was so rusted over, host Tony joked about needing a tetanus shot before working out. The equipment sat on bare concrete that had unsightly circles of rust from where weights had rested upon it. The ceiling tiles were decaying and falling down in this damp basement and there was mold trailing up the walls.
While the firefighters were saving other peoples’ lives, their gym was a dangerous hazard that had serious health safety concerns. Host Tony knew it was unacceptable for these modern day heroes to continue using this recreation room and deemed it a project for DIY’s “Man Caves.” Tackling the gym from the ground up, one of the firefighters learned to install rubber flooring from Man Cave specialist Jason Cameron. As Jason explained, rubber tiles are soft enough to protect joints from strenuous activity but durable enough to hand heavy gym equipment. When a treadmill is in use it vibrates and sends impact waves into the surface that it rests upon. When that surface is concrete, it rebounds back up and damages the machinery over time. Gym equipment mats, however, absorb the impact so that the equipment remains undamaged.
When the firefighter installed the tiles, he was amazed at how simple it was; “three simple pegs on each side” and it “fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.” He was done with the entire resurfacing of the basement floor within hours. With the water damaged ceiling tiles and mold, the basement was prone to dampness. The tiles helped to combat the mold because they are water resistant and do not harbor mold. This helped to keep the firefighters’ man cave clean without much maintenance, so they could concentrate on what really mattered – their fifty-inch plasma TV. Within a day, the firefighters had transformed their rusted over recreation center into a top-of-the-line relaxation area that was truly fit to be called a man cave..