Material amounts! aka. I'm making a shopping list

Hello! First time poster, but I've been reading this forum for a few months now, absorbing the copious amounts of information this forum has on it. Anyway, I've been for the past 2 years thinking about my own studio.. Or hell, I've probably been thinking about it way longer than that, but the past two years I've been seriously thinking about it. As you can guess, at some point it just overcomes you.. You want it. You need it. You can't live without it any more. So, for the last 6 months or so I've been putting things down on paper, budgeting, counting, googling, reading, you know the drill. I've come so far that I'm about to kick things a little further, and have begun to actually visualize the actual budget and required materials. So now I have a shopping list! :D That leads me to my question: I wonder if it would be possible for you who have actually gone through the build, to look at my raw material list and tell me if it is way over or way too little to build what I've been thinking of. I don't yet have a place. I'm looking all the time, and when the right one comes, I will kick things further. Anyway, I'm looking for a space of approximately 150-200m2, which would come to include a control room, live room, machine / HVAC room, vocal booth, a small edit / post prod. room and a lounge. What I've been looking at for materials are: 800m2 of 45mm rockwool 600m2 of 16mm MDF 1200m2 of 13mm gypsum board 500m of 45 x 120mm wall stud wood 2500m of 45mm x 45mm wood The MDF is actually not all MDF, I just for the sake of keeping this list simple included all possible fiber board, plywood, etc. as MDF. But you get the score, stuff for walls, ceilings, floors. The gypsum board is the thickest I can find at any even remotely humane prices. 15mm gypsum costs 6 times more!! Anyway, what I mainly want to know is, that do you think building a space I described would be possible with above materials? Or do you think I have too much of some? Too little of some? Thanks to everyone in advance.. I hope the question makes any sense! -Funktion

That's a big project! A whole bunch of questions come to mind, but let's talk about 1 - rafters for your internal rooms. I assume you'll have rooms-within-a-room, right? With a studio that big, the larger ceiling spans start costing a lot of money, and spans approach diminishing returns because your rafters have to support all of that plasterboard, acoustic treatment, HVAC silencers, and themselves. For example, in my part of the world, increasing from a 6 metre span to a 7 metre span using timber almost doubles the cost! Of course, the cost also depends on what materials are available and/or common (ie cheaper) where you live, which is why everybody on this forum has their location in their profile (hint hint). So even something as boring as rafters will probably impact your floorplan design, and that's before you even get to acoustic room ratios, sightlines, doorways, isolation and other considerations. When I finally bought my house and designed my studio, I had already been throught the entire process with 3 or 4 other designs. By designs I mean every stud, every length of conduit, every HVAC duct, every concrete block (including reinforcement), every door knob, every XLR connector, every architrave, all in Sketchup. In retrospect, it wasn't wasted effort, it's the only way of knowing exactly what materials you'll need. That list of 5 materials you've mentioned will grow to 300. So back to your question, it really is impossible to answer without a working up a proposed design and calculating what you need based on that.

adam wrote:

That's a big project! A whole bunch of questions come to mind, but let's talk about 1 - rafters for your internal rooms. I assume you'll have rooms-within-a-room, right? With a studio that big, the larger ceiling spans start costing a lot of money, and spans approach diminishing returns because your rafters have to support all of that plasterboard, acoustic treatment, HVAC silencers, and themselves. For example, in my part of the world, increasing from a 6 metre span to a 7 metre span using timber almost doubles the cost! Of course, the cost also depends on what materials are available and/or common (ie cheaper) where you live, which is why everybody on this forum has their location in their profile (hint hint). So even something as boring as rafters will probably impact your floorplan design, and that's before you even get to acoustic room ratios, sightlines, doorways, isolation and other considerations. When I finally bought my house and designed my studio, I had already been throught the entire process with 3 or 4 other designs. By designs I mean every stud, every length of conduit, every HVAC duct, every concrete block (including reinforcement), every door knob, every XLR connector, every architrave, all in Sketchup. In retrospect, it wasn't wasted effort, it's the only way of knowing exactly what materials you'll need. That list of 5 materials you've mentioned will grow to 300. So back to your question, it really is impossible to answer without a working up a proposed design and calculating what you need based on that.

Hey Adam, and thanks for the response! Room-in-a room, of course! I am aware that without a proper design it is impossible to know exactly what and how much materials I will need for the build. The list that I have is purely a ballpark allrounder sort of a guesstimate of what a facility of that size might use in materials, and purely for the construction of the rooms! Meaning that in addition to those there are ofcourse a lot of other stuff, but right now I'm looking at purely construction materials for the actual structure. :) My list is, indeed, a lot, lot longer! About a full A4 with a font size of 8 and row spacing of 1! And I'm sure the list isn't even complete yet... I have counted in HVAC units, HVAC ducts, duct corner pieces, silencers, T pieces, electrical cable, new electrical central box, audio cables, data cables and much much more.. For example, the HVAC duct corner pieces. I estimated I'd need about 20 of them, then doubled it and added spares. Something reading this forum has taught me is the mantra "approximate what you need, then double it". I was actually thinking about the ceilings last night when going to bed... I realized the amount of 45 x 120mm wood on my list will probably need to be at least doubled for the project. Something your reply already confirmed. But yeah, I'm not doing exact plans for amounts yet. It's not quite time for that. Ballparks and guesstimates. :) EDIT: I do have my location added to my profile... Or at least it is showing on my screen.

"So now I have a shopping list! :D" The shopping list comes after design specifications and the design comes after the budget and the budget comes after known real estate boundaries.