Starting with a clean slate :)

The home I'm building will have a basement 60' x 36' w/ 10' ceilings. The only downer is that it looks like I'm going to have lally columns running right down the middle of the basement, splitting it equally into 18' sides. Any ideas on how to build around them so that I can make the entire space usable without any negative acoustical issues?

Greetings! We need a little more input on what you want to do with that space... The basics of making it useable are pretty easy. Those columns aren't going to be much of a problem for acoustic treatment, and a control room 16 or so feet wide is still pretty good- especially if you can make it as long in the other direction as you want... The biggest thing will be sound isolation if you have a column in the middle of a room, but you can box it out just like the rest of your sound-walls to keep it structurally isolated. Columns aren't all that big a deal. If you can design your space to work with them, an 18' span is no problem. If you need more design help, let us know- but we'll be asking lots more questions...

You might want to ask your architect about the possibility of running a longitudinal support beam down the center. This could help distribute the load of the cross beams and allow you to use fewer columns. Then you could find clever ways to incorporate the sloped ceilings created by the "spine". Thomas

a concrete one-way slab would span it (shown w/ columns) but.. it is a basement there will be conc. walls steel $ has tripled recently, so there might not be much of a cost difference (check it). plus you get a firm floor above, no squeeky floors. a post tension slab system would be even less concrete- 5-6" thick, possibly no beams, except for the edgesand those are already walls!