Design of New Studio + Extension of Existing Home

hullo! this is going to be a bit unique in that i don't have my measurements imported into sketch-up or autocad quite yet, i don't have a budget because i am going through the process of some financial work and figuring out exactly what i will be able to get out of a loan, and with the exception of two bedrooms of the existing home, i'm not modifying a large structure for the purpose of building a studio. my game plan is to expand my existing house to use up more space on the property that i own for a twofold purpose: 1) expand the upstairs to create new bedrooms and a large master bedroom, and 2) (my favorite part) the downstairs portion of the home for a full recording space that i envision to include a large main room, a control room, a drum room, and then conversion of the two existing downstairs bedrooms to be an iso booth (and hallway) and a kitchen/lounge. (ultimately, my goal is to make this new recording facility my full-time job) i purchased and devoured rod's book and loved every sacred page of it. i think in my enthusiasm to read through it i skipped something and i'm actually either not finding it or missing the reference somehow, but i didn't see a whole lot discussion about new constructions and materials to use. my question is mostly here. the interior walls that rod describes as having two layers of gypsum/drywall with insulation and air between show up as the best STC (i really hope i'm remembering that correctly!). however, i would envision those as being interior walls. does that description apply to the construction of exterior walls? is it possible that the description there is actually a possibility for the only walls necessary in a new construction? in my mind from what i've read here and in the book it seems like it needs to be more complicated than that. however, i'm trying to figure out what my options will be in terms of building the outer walls, building inner walls as necessary and the approaches that can be taken for that so that i know exactly how much space i am going to have to work with when all is said and done. those measurements and thicknesses will greatly determine exactly how much space i have and where to place everything in the new space. i hope that didn't ramble on too much. a friend of mine and i are going to continue taking measurements of the existing home (she works at the architecture department of the university of washington) this evening and i'm hoping that, with her coaching, i can import those measurements into autocad and post my design ideas here (vs. my current mock up which was done in microsoft word to scale using measured lines (i'm so embarassed)). any input is hugely appreciated. my thanks! -= george =-

More complicated, that's funny:) I have seen it discussed in several areas of the Internet using several methods but it all refers to the same principal. Mass air mass. Density air density. Layer void layer. This is achieved in the same way no matter if it is an interior wall, a floor or an exterior wall. A layer of material, a void, another layer of material. An interior wall has a layer (sheetrock) a void(air created by framing members thickness) and a layer (sheetrock). An exterior wall will have these same properties. Doesn't matter that the exterior of a house may have brick and the inside is sheetrock. Still it is density created by brick and a void created by framing member thickness and lastly density from the interior layer of sheetrock. This idea is not restricted to studio wall building but is used in many areas of building in general. Even the celebrated "room in a room" design is made with this basic idea in mind. Looking at a regular snare drum you can see this idea at work. A skin on top then air created by the frame and another skin on the bottom. Same principal, different results as required. You can look around your house and see this working everywhere. Regular interior walls have mass air mass. But the mass is seldom enough to push down the frequencies in the hunt for isolation. This can be rectified, if need be, by installing more mass on one or both sides. Even a simple hollow core door is constructed using a layer a void and a layer. It's everywhere, kinda like Elvis :)

heheehe your point is very well taken. (: i guess that leads me to another question (doesn't it always? ): ) though. when designing the exterior walls, do i gain anything by designing them to be in line with what i was seeing in rod's book for maximum STC (i.e. two layers of some material for walls, insulation, void, insulation, two layers of some material for walls) and then having interior studio walls of similar design (with different thicknesses perhaps to accommodate for frequency weaknesses) or will that fall in line more with the theory that too many layers and leafs may not yield as much of a positive return? i greatly apologize if that seems like a stupid question. i'm trying to make sense of what i've been reading and i guess the only way to get a better understanding is to get some of these horrible questions off my chest. (: ultimately it's going to make a huge difference in how i end up designing this whole thing as that much thickness will reduce by quite a lot the amount of space i'm going to end up having to work with (although i might have some room to play depending on what the residential line codes are in the county i live in. if only they had detailed information related to that on their web page...) thanks again for your comments. (: i appreciate the insight. -= george =-

Only thing I can say for certain is this. Slow down. The rush to get these builds done with so many unanswered questions is not helping your cause. One of the most often looked over items in developing a recording environment is "details." Folks rush like its gonna get built in a few days or weeks. It doesn't and if it does it is full of shoulda coulda woulda's. Is six weeks to much to ask of your time? I understand that Rods book is a treasure source for a lot of people in respect to making dreams of recording areas come true. Read it...slowly. Hell read it fast! But read it until you can make since of it. Chances are construction is a foreign language to you as it is with many diy'ers. That reason alone is enough to slow down and get a plan together. It isn't a job that just any beer drinking long haired yahoo can do. Although I am all of those things, I study everyday to understand better what it is that I am trying to do in respect to construction for acoustic space. You are not asking stupid questions. You are asking lazy questions :) If you have a book specif to doing what you are trying to do, read it. Your answers will most likely be found there. Good luck.

hehe thanks for the tip. construction by any stretch isn't going to even pretend to start until many things are in place. firstly i will need to finish taking detailed measurements of the existing house as it stands right now, then start the planning process for the space that i intend to build into. after measurements are done, the careful measurement of what will become the new exterior walls followed by the design and measurement of the interior walls and all of the fun and joy that goes into a decoupling design. the measurements of the house as it exists right now is the easy part, it's the new structure that will take quite a lot more time and care and patience. which is why i want to do the best that i can to do it correctly. the materials used, the thickness of the walls, and such are going to play a great deal in what i end up designing and how i create the layout. i won't have even finished working out the financial side of the loans and such necessary for this in six weeks (probably just a bit more than two months at minimum) so i have plenty of time to spend working on design ideas for this, which is why i want to get some of the early questions out of the way now as i start to think about how everything lays out. i apologize if any of this came across as me being either lazy or rushing to jump in feet first in an environment i know very little about. i definitely want to do things correctly the first time and folks here are an absolute treasure trove of experience that i hope to draw from (and eventually contribute to!). (: thanks again for the insight. i'm still not entirely certain what the best course of action will be for the external walls of the new structure but i'll keep reading chapter four and looking through the forums here and see if a combination of the two makes something click. right now i'm just trying to get a sense for "if you could go back and replace the walls that you were given that were composed of (insert construction here), how would you have done it?' -= george =-

The firm I work with has a residential remodel project going in Mobile. A brick exterior, concrete slab foundation and everything that I have seen on the inside is double sheetrock. It is also double rocked on the ceilings as well! Bedrooms, hallways, living, anywhere we cut into the walls has double rock. That is a first for me! Big rectangular rooms with 9 feet ceilings and a long 46ish inch wide hallway. It probable helps that the roof is tall and you can stand up in it and walk on the wood decked/ insulated attic floor. How much? I dunno. Not a ring in the house. Guys banging out the tile in the m/bath at the end of the hall and separated from the ear by two of these walls, it was like a muffled sound. Like it was farther away from us then it really was? Even the flanking through the pipes was mostly noticeable only in either of the 5 bathrooms. The rock, whatever we have taken off so far, was glued with what may be constructive adhesive. Too hard to tell saving it(adhesive) is hardened and brittle. Construction glues that become rigid after exposure to air are mostly frowned upon these days. It has been proven that an STC rating is only as good as the field construction of the wall(s). A lot of worry goes into this aspect of a build. You can figure losing a square foot of floor space per wall run, per wall, interior or exterior with decoupled framing. If you don't lose it there, you'll lose it in the treatment side from what I have seen. Hope I didn't bore you with my recounting of the days events, it some how seemed relevant.

"if you could go back and replace the walls that you were given that were composed of (insert construction here), how would you have done it?'

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absolutely not boring at all in any way, shape, or form. it's helping formulate some of the concepts that i'm seeing in the construction of studios as done by folks from this forum coupled with what i'm seeing at construction sites (i can't drive by one without stopping and studying) and comparing it to notes i'm making from the book. what i find funny is that now that i've read through the book a couple times and made notes, i'm going back and reading through some of the studio builds done here and they're making a LOT more sense. i'm paying attention to different details and noticing things that i was clueless about before that i can relate to things i read. i feel this is encouraging. the last question was mostly for anyone reading this who built a facility into an existing space and hated the exterior walls they had to deal with. in retrospect, i'm beginning to wonder if the external walls don't matter quite as much as the interior walls. for example, lou's studio build being large bricks, "render" (i need to look that up), and so forth.

You can figure losing a square foot of floor space per wall run, per wall, interior or exterior with decoupled framing. If you don't lose it there, you'll lose it in the treatment side from what I have seen.

that's also a great piece of advice. (: also. double sheetrock on everything? i passed that on to a friend of mine in new york who works in construction and his response was something along the lines of: :shock: -= george =-

i'm pretty sure this is a taboo thing in double posting, but i wanted a separate message for the first draft of the drawings i'm doing. i disclaimer this by saying that i'm on day two of ever using AutoCad and i have a lot to learn. however, i think that this might give somewhat of a representation of what it is that i'm going to hopefully be working with. originally my plan was to convert the bedroom on the right into half hallway into the new facility and half isolated booth. after measuring the support beams in the ceiling to the floor and finding that they only gave a clearance of 6' 10 7/8", i realized that i likely don't have enough room in the ceiling to redo it properly for isolation and still have room to stand up straight, so i think that space will end up becoming storage for cables, headphones, microphones, TTY phones, etc. the new facility will have higher ceilings. the white lines with large lettering identifies the proposed new walls to be built. (to the left of the drawing is a garage). The kitchen and deck are part of the upper level of the home, the two bedrooms identified are part of the lower level of the home, which will be the same plane as the studio. i'm dabbling with two ideas. the first is the one i'm uploading now (the second i'll upload another day since i'm out of time for this evening's fun) has planned extension that goes as far out to the right as the kitchen's wall. the second plan proposes to go as far as the edge of the deck which would add another ~12' 6" or so of space to work with. this is a split level entry home and the plan is to build on the same plane as the bottom floor of the house for all studio functions (additionally, to build new bedrooms above it). since the ground floor is somewhat below the yard level, i think that a slow grade down to that level where the box reading "double doors" could be a potential solution for where to put an outside entry way into the studio. in my head, it makes the most sense to not have the control room where those double doors are, but i'm totally open to suggestions. the goal is: control room, main room, iso booth, drum room. lounge and closet/storage will be taken care of by the two existing downstairs bedrooms. -= george =- edit: i forgot to add that my goal in the control room is to make it somewhat roomy. the ability to have the mixer desk, room to roll a chair around, a table behind the chair for rackmount equipment, and then a couch behind that would be my ideal scenario. obviously if the space that i have isn't going to permit for that then that's fine but if it's a possibility, that's what i'm hoping for. (: my first design thoughts had the drum room in the far left of the L shape, the control room facing right and finishing off the rest of the space, and then having a large main room in the space on the right (which will now include an iso booth in the top part of the large main room).

maybe the middle room could be the control room? or just shift the CR to the side...

wow, thanks for the suggestion! that would be the ideal situation. put it dead center of everything so that it has a view and access to everything in some fashion. unfortunately because of the load bearing beams in the ceiling, there's no way i would be able to do any kind of isolation or treatment and still have enough room to stand up inside of it. initially that's what i wanted to do but from a practical standpoint i don't think it's feasible (at least not with the knowledge i possess). i'm almost finished drawing up a couple of different ideas in autocad as far as placement. i'll post them here once they're done and see if anyone has any suggestions for improvement. thanks again! -= george =-