I'm back seeking design ideas for basement studio #2

Greetings everyone, About 8 years ago I came here ready to soundproof my basement and ended up with a recording studio that exceeded my every expectation. In that time I have visited a number of home studio's and have seen (or heard) just how valuable the advice here on this forum is. Thanks to everyone here that helped me on my journey with the Rotten Basement Conversion I was able to safely build two great sounding, very well isolated rooms. Following the studio's completion I got married and we had our first son. I was still able to get down in the studio at least once a week with my band-mates, and helped a few local artists create a couple of great cd's that I'm very happy with. So why on earth would I go through this all over again? Well, when I bought the house for the studio I was a bachelor and didn't really factor in shoe storage, school districts, or space for two kids. Two you say? I thought you had one son? Well yes I did, but we have just moved to a bigger house, quite a bit further out from DC; in preparation for son #2 who will be here any day soon. So we just moved in a few weeks ago now, and I've been measuring, considering my requirements and possible layouts. Once I have permits I'm looking to get contractors lined up (I will likely use the same one's as last time - only change will be finding a new heating and a/c guy) and hope to get the work completed and ready to move in and start working by the end of January (may be a stretch, but I'm gonna shoot for it). I plan to take a similar approach as last time. I will write a detailed plan for the contractors and supervise as well as assist them with anything that is unique to this type of build (i.e. acoustical caulk, green glue etc.) My budget is gonna be about $20k, but with that money I also need to finish one other room on the basement (make the window a full egress window, add a closet and rock to make it officially a 5th bedroom), and add a walk out (to prevent my band-mates walking through the kitchen and waking the family in the wee hours). Just how quiet do I want to get? Well at the last house I could play in the wee hours (and my drummer can get very loud) without neighbors ever knowing. Inside the house my wife said that from the 2nd floor it just sounded like someone left the TV on downstairs. That was quiet enough for my son to sleep through Jam nights. This time around my neighbors on the south side of the property (the wall with the Fireplace Access (2) in the floor plan) are considerably closer (about 12 ft away). This house being of more modern construction than my last (built around 2001) it uses quite different construction approaches and so given that it has these engineered ceiling joists I will not be hanging three layers of 5/8' rock from them like last time. Instead I hope to frame the ceiling to sit on the walls - something that I hope will also increase isolation to the upstairs. Another major consideration is what was perhaps the weakest point of my last studio build - climate control. You may recall from my old thread that I didn't quite receive what I asked for from the last A/C guy. Hence this time I will not be expecting to get independent heating and cooling without needing to invest in a separate system from the rest of the house. Here's the basement layout: I'll describe as best I can the configuration in the basement along with what I had in mind. The areas called Bedroom and Furnace Room are currently unfinished (although as previously mentioned I plan to finish former into a 5th bedroom. All other rooms are currently finished and so I am expecting I will need to demo (at the least) the room currently named "Music Room" in the plan, and hope to include a control room, drum room, and one other performance room for instrument and vocal isolation. The room that is tagged "Entrance / Lounge" is where I hope to add the walk out (by replacing the window that is currently showing on the plan). The rest of this room I would likely keep as-is for people to lounge in (sofa and tv on the wall type thing) and I would keep the rather large closets for my guitar collection and other gear storage needs. Here's the floorplan for the Entrance / Lounge: In the "Music Room" there are two things of note I should mention. One is that there is a fireplace cleaning access door on the south wall - labeled (2). The size of this door is only 14.5" square, but I would need to have access to this as well as consider the flanking path that it may be creating. The other item of note is a support pillar about halfway down the left side of the room. It is located 33" from the left wall and 18'8" from the south wall. Again I suspect this may be a potential flanking path. Here is the floor plan for the Music Room (to be Control and Isolation Rooms): The ceiling height is 93" throughout, although there is a soffit along the right side wall of the Music Room which starts at 37" wide and narrows to 21" wide after 19.5". It is 12' deep. From looking in the mechanical room it looks like this soffit is for ductwork and plumbing going to the upstairs. I'm thinking that the area that currently has a hardwood floor (ends where the floor notches out on the left side) would make a good control room, and I would likely add one of the four solid core doors that I salvaged from the last studio as and entrance from the stair hallway. So I guess my main questions currently are: 1) Should I create an extra storage area along the south wall to reduce noise going through those windows and up through the fireplace access into the Family room above? 2) Should I be sandwiching the support pillar between two walls to reduce the possible flanking effects? 3) What are your thoughts on layout? I was thinking perhaps two triangular shaped rooms in the bottom half of the music rooms - one for drum isolation and the other for instrument and vocal isolation. 4) Would I be better off considering a mini split or separate a/c & heating zone? If I go with the latter does that require it's own air handler inside too? I'm assuming so since I may need to cool the drum room while the upstairs of the house is requiring heat in the winter for example. I think that's about all for now, but it's late so I may well have forgotten something. I will also be posting some photo's from my Ipad soon (don't have them locally here on my laptop). Many thanks in advance for your insight, and it's great to be back! I wasn't expecting to ever do this again but I'm very excited to be! Best wishes to you all, Andy Edit 9/22/13 - adding an additional question. Has anyone every tried splitting one large room using one of these exterior folding patio doors? I was wondering if it might provide enough isolation between a drummer and singer / other musicians whilst adding a) great site lines, and b) the ability to open up to create one larger room when isolation is not needed. Thoughts?

Hi Andy, and good to see you back for more torture! :) Your original build thread was like reading a horror story: Every time I thought you had finally beaten one bad deal, another one popped up to take its place. It was actually one of the threads that made me realize just how important it is to double-check everything, and pay big attention to small details. Your new place looks pretty nice, by the way. I am most certainly hoping that you don't find this build anywhere near as "entertaining" as the last one was!. Congratulations on getting married and having two kids, too! Having a family can certainly change your outlook... I'll go over your posts in more detail later, then comment if I see some place I can say something intelligent. Welcome back! - Stuart -

Please excuse the bump. Just wanted to make sure I have provided all the required info. I know everyone is very busy and know that it's tough to find time for these things. In the meantime I am off learning how to do 3d drawings in Sketchup so that I can hopefully provide some useful 3d drawings. Thanks and be well! Andy.

Here's a quick (and quite poor) sketch of what I was thinking: Lot's to learn still with Sketchup!

Hi Andy! Best of luck in your project! How negotiable is the lounge? Can the 5th bedroom serve as an effective lounge? (i.e. is it a guest bedroom or likely to be in full time service?) Could that space be brought into the (ahem) mix? Right now the control room seems like it's going to put your speakers in some awkward places... you'll have a lot of reflections off the wall to the right of the listening position and a lack of symmetry over on the left. It seems to me there's a couple of ways to deal with it... One option would be to orient the mixing board towards the wall that is currently to the right of the person seated at the mixing table.... turn the control room into a side facing room rather than a front facing room. Even so though, it's a pretty tight fit for the mix room... how set are you on putting it there? I've never been all that fond of high traffic control rooms... What would you think about putting the control room down taking up a portion of the current music room, and moving the music rooms further up? Also... heads up about double walling the wall over to the furnace room... I'd expect some noise from there with the current plan.

Adding to what Johnnie said: your control room is not laid out symmetrically, and that is critical. The console, the speakers and your head must all be centered symmetrically around the center line of the room, and the left half of the room must be a mirror-image of the right half, at least for the front section of the room. Also, the Control Room looks to be practically square right now, and that's pretty close to the worst shape for a control room. Have you looked into possible room ratios that are close to the space you have available, to see if you can adjust your room dimensions to match one of those? So my suggestion would be to re-think the CR size, shape and layout, then see how that affects the rest of the studio. - Stuart -

Thanks guys. I'm going back to the drawing board. Sight lines are important but of no use if the rooms sound awful! The bedroom, bathroom, and Furnace Room are pretty much untouchable. My wife is giving me the left-hand side of the basement and hope's to keep it separate from the studio - hence the desire to add a walk-out entrance to the studio side (currently planned for the room labeled Entrance/ Lounge). Thanks a lot for your feedback. I'll see what else I can come up with and post again soon. Many thanks, Andy

Getting back to your original questions....:

So I guess my main questions currently are: 1) Should I create an extra storage area along the south wall to reduce noise going through those windows and up through the fireplace access into the Family room above?

That's probably not necessary, although you could do that if you need the storage. Your isolation plan can be tweaked to deal with those windows. One thought on basements and windows: sometimes local regulations require additional emergency egress paths, and architects specify the windows for those (even if they are impossibly shaped!), so you might want to check what your local code requires there, and if those windows are your extra escape route. If so, then you probably won't be able to cover them up with more windows in the inner-leaf, and in that case putting them in a sotrage room would be the best solution. Food for thought.

2) Should I be sandwiching the support pillar between two walls to reduce the possible flanking effects?

Definitely! Figure your room layouts so that pillar is in the air gap between rooms. If it runs through a room, then you'd have to box it in without touching it, if you need high levels of isolation. (Hmmmm... let me think about this..... new baby sleeping upstairs, .... drums at 3 AM... yup, you need high levels of isolation! :) )

3) What are your thoughts on layout? I was thinking perhaps two triangular shaped rooms in the bottom half of the music rooms - one for drum isolation and the other for instrument and vocal isolation.

What are your priorities here? Is this more of a rehearsal room with a control room tagged on for occasional us, or is it more of a mixing-centered thing, where the control room is the center of your life, and the live room is just there for the occasional jamming session? I would concentrate my efforts on whichever room is more important to you, then fit the other rooms around it.

4) Would I be better off considering a mini split or separate a/c & heating zone? If I go with the latter does that require it's own air handler inside too? I'm assuming so since I may need to cool the drum room while the upstairs of the house is requiring heat in the winter for example.

There are several paths open to you at this early stage: 1) Tie into the existing house system, if it has the extra capacity to handle that. But given your previous experience, you probably aren't too keen on this one! :) 2) Install a fully ducted system, zoned, with air-handler, dampers, control system, etc., where the one system will deal with all the rooms. 3) Do ducts only for fresh air in / stale air out, and put a mini-split in each room for the actual cooling / de-humidifying. Some things to think about in deciding which way to go: Cost (obviously!) There might be a big difference in cost between the two systems, or they might turn out very close in the end, after you take everything into account. So you'll have to do your homework there, to see if this is a big factor: if one of these options would blow your budget while the other is do-able, then your decision is already made!. Complexity, (the air handler system is more complex, since you need the controller, dampers, thermostats, etc.) Noise: even though they are very quiet, mini-splits do still make some noise, and that or might not be an issue. With an air-handler, ducts and silencers, there can be practically no noise at all. Reliability. If your one single air handler dies, your whole studio is dead until you can get it fixed. If one of your mini-splits dies, then only that room is out of action, while the others can carry on going. That might or might not be important to you. There's probably more issues too, but I'm half asleep typing this, and those are all that my addled brains could come up with right now!!! :)

5) Has anyone every tried splitting one large room using one of these exterior folding patio doors?

I haven't done it, and I wouldn't recommend it. It would be a major pain to try to get enough mass and reliable seals on a system like that. I think you'd be disappointed by the results. Now it's my turn for questions! :) 1) Is this going to be a commercial facility, or a hobby studio? I mean, will you be renting out the space to all comers and selling mixing/master services, or just using it to jam with your buddies a few times per month? 2) Have you decided on how much isolation you need? In terms of decibels, I mean. If not, then it's time to drag out that Sound Level Meter and do some measuring... 3) You seem to have a lot of HVAC return registers in your walls: Have you figured out what to do about those? Moving them / closing them off will likely change the balance of your entire house system, so you should probably get professional advice on how to deal with those, form a local HVAC guy (just not the one you used last time!). - Stuart -

Thanks so much for your replies Stuart and Johnnie, and my apologies for the delayed response. With our second child due at any moment (Due Date Oct 28) my honey-do list seems to be quite full these days :) So you've both really had me rethink the layout - for which I'm very grateful. I'm now thinking I would put the Control Room where the drum room was (bottom wall by the fireplace access - which solves that problem for starters) and having it be a triangular shape going in the other direction. I'll try to update my sketchup and post later so you can see what I have in mind as well as check the room ratios. Talking of which I have a question about ratios. Since the ratios are for room width, height and depth - how does it work for non-square rooms? I mean most rooms will have more than one length or width right? Often the height too. Or am I checking all dimensional possibilities? Ok so now let me answer the questions you asked Stuart.

1) Is this going to be a commercial facility, or a hobby studio? I mean, will you be renting out the space to all comers and selling mixing/master services, or just using it to jam with your buddies a few times per month?

I'd like to think that one day it will become more commercial, but to start with it would be space for me to work with a few select artists each year to help them record their work. Additionally it will be a space for me and my band to record, jam, and perform weekly live video webcasts.

2) Have you decided on how much isolation you need? In terms of decibels, I mean. If not, then it's time to drag out that Sound Level Meter and do some measuring...

I have my sound level meter ready but have yet to try jamming down there prior to any isolation work having been done. Tests like that are pretty tough at the moment with a heavily pregnant wife who is pretty much couch-ridden at the moment. When an opportunity arises (the only one I can imagine will be when she's at the hospital after #2 is born) I will try to do some testing.

3) You seem to have a lot of HVAC return registers in your walls: Have you figured out what to do about those? Moving them / closing them off will likely change the balance of your entire house system, so you should probably get professional advice on how to deal with those, form a local HVAC guy (just not the one you used last time!).

Yeah I'm not sure why there are all those - they're just open to the mechanical room currently - no return's there at all. I will be looking to find a new HVAC guy to work with on both that and the overall needs, design, and installation for the new HVAC. On to Johhnie's questions:

How negotiable is the lounge? Can the 5th bedroom serve as an effective lounge? (i.e. is it a guest bedroom or likely to be in full time service?) Could that space be brought into the (ahem) mix?

The lounge is negotiable, but anything to the right of that is not - i.e. the 5th bedroom will not be usable except for sleepovers of drunk musician friends :)

I've never been all that fond of high traffic control rooms... What would you think about putting the control room down taking up a portion of the current music room, and moving the music rooms further up?

Yes - I think this is the best bet, and as I mentioned above - it also solves the concern I had with the Fireplace access thing being a flanking path to the Family Room above.

Also... heads up about double walling the wall over to the furnace room... I'd expect some noise from there with the current plan.

I'm not 100% sure I understand, although the sketch was just that - a sketch. ultimately I would have all walls (including that between the mechanical room and studio) be a MAM construction. In this spot by adding 2 layers of 5/8 to the existing mechanical room wall, and then framing a second wall inside with three layers of 5/8" and green glue on the last layer with insulation in between the studs. That seems to work like a champ in the old studio. Perhaps I missed your point though so please do let me know. Thanks again to both of you for taking the time and wishing everyone a great rest of weekend.

Hi Guys, The new baby boy arrived into this world safely last Monday I'm pleased to announce. It has of course been a bit busy since then, but I did get a couple of hours tonight to work on a sketch for what I was describing above. I'm also hoping someone might be able to help advise me on the above question about room ratios. Many thanks, Andy

The new baby boy arrived into this world safely last Monday I'm pleased to announce.

Wooohooo! Congratulations, Andy! :yahoo:

Talking of which I have a question about ratios. Since the ratios are for room width, height and depth - how does it work for non-square rooms? I mean most rooms will have more than one length or width right? Often the height too. Or am I checking all dimensional possibilities?

As soon as your room is not perfectly rectangular, then the usual on-line room-ratio calculators are no longer accurate. However, as long as the angles are small, the inaccuracy is also small, so you can still use the calculators to get a rough idea of the acoustics. Just use the average dimension in each plane. So if the room is 10 feet wide at the front and 12 feet wide at the back, then use 11 feet as the width dimension in the calculator. If you are paranoid, then you can also plug in the 10 foot and 12 foot dimensions, to see how they work out. You'll end up with a set of 9 calculations that should give you a pretty good idea of how the room will behave. - Stuart -

Thanks so much Stuart - that's a great help. Any feedback in general on Triangular rooms? I was doing some poking around elsewhere and it seemed that they aren't the most favorable shape for acoustics, control rooms in particular - especially if you set up the mix position along the hypotenuse wall. In my elementary understanding I was hoping that the non-parallel walls would result in in less reflections and less wasted space, but it looks as though the corners can cause troubles? Many thanks again, Andy

Hi Andy Sorry to be AFK a bit. Life gets busy around holidays. Don't mean to be a downer, but I'm not a fan of that shape. One of the issues I'm looking at, is what happens to the sound coming out of your speakers? It looks to me like with these angles, you're going to have a number of immediate reflections of sound off the walls behind you, that are going to directly pass through the seating area of the mix position. That's definitely not desirable.

Yeah, I agree with Johnnie: Triangular shaped rooms are strange beasts, acoustically. The only advantage is that there are no parallel walls, but the angles between the three walls make it really hard to get workable geometry in there. I don't think I've ever seen a triangular shaped room for a pro studio... - Stuart -

Thank you both for your feedback. I really suck at the designing part and have gone back and forth 100 times (no exaggeration) on various different configurations. I think I'm almost back to where I was at the beginning taking into account Johnnie's suggestion to rotate the CR 90 degrees and also having looked very closely at, and incorporating room ratios. I tried to use Louden and Sepmeyer but given my available ceiling height it didn't really yield anything. I then read through this article from Salford University and by creating a quick spreadsheet that calculates room dimensions based on the ratios and ceiling height was able to find one from their 50 cubic metre selections, namely 1:1.58:1.89 So here is the latest floor plan (still not much more than a sketch) I am considering. As you can see I have gone back to the idea of rectangular rooms and would add treatment wherever necessary. I just can't seem to find a working design otherwise - but that's likely just my poor design skills. Still, this does at least seem to work functionally so perhaps it will work acoustically also? :? So my main questions at this point are as follows: 1) Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all. 2) In the small drum room / booth I would really like to do sliding glass doors or some kind of glass wall to make this room feel like an extension of the main room. I'm not so worried about isolation here - although I do of course want to keep as much drums out of the main room vocal mics as possible, but rather my question and concern is on the acoustic properties inside this room for recording drums. If one wall is mainly glass, and especially if the other wall will be containing a window - is there not a pretty high probability that the drums will not record well in this room? Why so much glass you may be wondering. Well a large part of what I do these days is live video performances. I have PTZ camera's located in each room and stream bands playing live (check out www.youtube.com/recordingstudiolive for an idea on what I was doing at the old space). Hence I'd really like to keep these two rooms as connected as possible. 3) Is my Control Room going to be too small to sound decent? I have read that they should ideally be 1500 cubic feet minimum and that there's even an ideal 11ft ceiling height. I'm quite a bit off on both - approx. 1150sq ft and 88 - 92" or so by the time I've framed the new ceiling (after demo I'm measuring 92" from slab to joist). I think that's about it for the questions. I'm pleased to say that unlike the last house I've only uncovered one nasty surprise behind the walls here so far - a giant wasps nest that appears to be dormant. Fingers crossed I don't uncover anything else this time! :yahoo:

Reference my question 1:

Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all.

I'm guessing I need to angle the two walls at the front left and right of the control room. 6 degrees each side right? Still no idea on the other two questions though and welcoming everyone's thoughts. Wishing everyone a super weekend. Andy.

was able to find one from their 50 cubic metre selections, namely 1:1.58:1.89

OK, but what are the actual dimensions? That matters too!

I just can't seem to find a working design otherwise - but that's likely just my poor design skills. Still, this does at least seem to work functionally so perhaps it will work acoustically also?

IT is inside the Bolt Area, so it should work. And plain rectangular rooms can certainly make good studios! Personally, I'm really partial to RFZ design, so most of the ones I do are based on that, but there's nothing wrong with plain old rectangular, if you treat it appropriately.

1) Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all.

If the glass is at your first reflection point, then yes, it is a problem. And angling it down might help a bit, but not as much as you imagine: reflections will just come from a different point on the glass. sound expands outwards in a 3D field, not just in 2D, so instead of thinking about the sound that came out exactly horizontal from your speaker and hit the glass at yoru ear height, change your point of view to 3D and think about the sound that came out from the speaker going in the same direction but heading slightly upwards: that will now strike the glass a bit higher than your head, and be reflected right back at your ears... That's why splaying your walls is a good way of creating an RFZ. Or if you want a rectangular room, then you must treat the first reflection points with thick absorption. That's a problem if your window is where the treatment has to go...

2) In the small drum room / booth I would really like to do sliding glass doors or some kind of glass wall to make this room feel like an extension of the main room. I'm not so worried about isolation here - although I do of course want to keep as much drums out of the main room vocal mics as possible, but rather my question and concern is on the acoustic properties inside this room for recording drums. If one wall is mainly glass, and especially if the other wall will be containing a window - is there not a pretty high probability that the drums will not record well in this room?

There should be no problem with that. Most drum kits sound good when recorded in a slightly bright room, so as long as you have a reasonable amount of absorption on the ceiling and other walls, and maybe some diffusion too, you should be OK.

3) Is my Control Room going to be too small to sound decent? I have read that they should ideally be 1500 cubic feet minimum and that there's even an ideal 11ft ceiling height. I'm quite a bit off on both - approx. 1150sq ft and 88 - 92" or so by the time I've framed the new ceiling (after demo I'm measuring 92" from slab to joist).

I just wrote a reply to another post, asking more or less the same thing, so I', just copying and pasting that here: "That depends on what you want to do, and far how you want to go! For example, for optimum critical listening room, the specs from EBU, call for a floor area of not less than 40m2 for a reference room, and 30m2 for a high quality control room. That's about 430 square feet and 320 square feet, respectively. On the other hand ITU specs call for "20 - 60 m2" for a stereo room, and "30 - 70 m2" for a multi-channel room (5.1, 7.1, etc.). 20m2 is about 215 square feet. On the other-other hand, John has built highly successful studios inside a shipping container, and many people here on the forum have built great studios in small spaces. So, if you are aiming for a world-class studio that meets international specs, then you need a floor area of about 250 square feet or more for your control room, and about 5 times that for your live room, for a total of about 1500 ft2 or so. Or if you don't need to go to that level, then you can do a great studio in less than that." The specs don't actually mention height, and yes about 1400 cubic feet is a good total volume, so you can work it back from there: if you have "standard" 8 foot ceilings then, then about 175 square feet of floor space would give you that, so a room roughly 17' x 10' would be good. But as I said above, John and others have done fantastic things in much smaller spaces. I mentioned on another thread that I did a design for a guy in Canada last year on about 400 square feet of space, and we managed to fit in FOUR rooms: CR, LR, vocal booth, live room. So you can get good studios in small spaces.

I'm guessing I need to angle the two walls at the front left and right of the control room. 6 degrees each side right?

6° will get rid of flutter echo, but isn't enough to deal with first reflections. There's no minimum angle or "one size fits all" here: you have to ray trace, either in SketchUp or on paper, with ruler and protractor, to make sure that your reflections are missing your head by a wide margin. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, Thanks so much for answering my questions. I'm very relieved to hear about the drum room sound and CR size. You'll be pleased (or perhaps concerned) to hear that I have a copy of MHOA on the way, although it will have to take a back seat to Sketchup8 for Dummies which I am currently loving - wish I'd picked that up a month ago! I'm not sure if MHOA will be too much for me but we'll see. So I've been spending the last week or so doing more research, reading through as many build threads as I can, and playing with the room ratios some more. To answer your question about the actual dimensions of the CR - with the orientation as shown in the jpg above I'm hoping I can get a ceiling height of 92" (current slab to joist height is 95" and I plan to frame my ceiling on top of the newly framed walls). At 92" I think I could even do Louden's first ratio of 1:1.4:1.9 which for my CR would be 7'8h x 10'8w 14'7l. edit: actually this won't work, and neither will 1:1.58:1.89 - I only have an available room length of 14'10; and that's before framing the new inside walls! Back to the drawing board again for me :cen: Having said all that, given everything I've been reading and considering your comments I can't help but think I need consider the following priorities:

• Orient the CR so that I can put the window in the front wall between the speakers (so that I don't end up with glass in my first reflection zone).
• RFZ - to increase the acoustic potential of the room
• Increase the CR size if possible also to increase the acoustic potential of the room

I also need to look more closely at the thought of soffit mounting my HR824's - something I hadn't really given much thought to previously - but your arguments for doing so in other threads is quite compelling. In the future I hope to add a walk-out / load-in door in the area currently marked as the lounge (can't afford to do it now as it would eat up most of my budget for the studio) and if ever this became a commercial operation I would need to make that the wheel chair access from outside - so I'm keeping this in consideration for my plans too. So what do you think? Would you go with something like I pictured above but perhaps add some splay? Or does your experienced eye see an improved configuration that my untrained eye just can't see? I feel like I have a lot of space to play with all told - I'm just struggling to find the right location and orientation for each room. I finally got around to calculating my spend from my last "rotten basement" build and will be posting the breakdown in my old build thread for others to use. It came to a little over $30k given some of the unexpected issues I encountered. The interesting thing I noticed though was that the most affordable part of the project was the drywall install as my best friend's Dad's company did it for me and they were only charging $20ph plus materials at cost. Given that they could have done the framing for me too if I had gone with steel framing - I am now seriously considering doing steel framing for this build and having them do it. By comparison the guys that I had come in to do the wood framing were charging $49ph. From what I've read the only thing I'd have to frame with wood would be around the window right? Next on my list of topics to research will be Ray-Tracing, but for tonight I'm going to get back to Sketchup for Dummies. In other exciting news I have a structural engineer coming over tomorrow to look at my ceiling joist load calculations, and to confirm if I can take out the perimeter framing. I'm hoping I've done enough work for him that his fee won't eat up a tenth of my budget! Fingers crossed! Thanks as always for your generosity of time, insight and support, it's very much appreciated! Andy

So I've been hard at work learning Sketchup and boy what a difference a little reading makes - I feel so much more comfortable with it now - thank you Sketchup for Dummies. Now I need to read "Designing for Dummies"! I'm attaching my first decent attempt at a Sketchup. This is how my basement is currently configured - what I'm calling my baseline floorplan. I purged the file but it was still too large to upload here so you can download it from here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/99895108/baseline%20structure_Purged2.skp

So what do you think? Would you go with something like I pictured above but perhaps add some splay? Or does your experienced eye see an improved configuration that my untrained eye just can't see? I feel like I have a lot of space to play with all told - I'm just struggling to find the right location and orientation for each room.

Anyone have any thoughts on the above? Now that I've sharpened my Sketchup skills my next one will be the new floorplan. Many thanks and hope everyone is enjoying the weekend! Andy

I tried to open your SketchUp file, but it says it was created with a different version! :( I don't want to upgrade just yet, as I'm in the middle of a big project, and last time I upgraded I ran into unexpected issues... I should be done in about a week or so, so I'll upgrade then, and give it another shot. Sorry! - Stuart -

No worries Stuart - I totally understand. I've been there with studio software so many times! I've actually been working an numerous different configurations in Sketchup using the baseline file and inserting various different control rooms based on ratios that work with my ceiling height, seeing if I can make it work given ductwork location Etc. and then examining the room predictions to see how it might sound. Let me post some of that and see what you think Stuart - and of course anyone else who might like to share some feedback. Btw, structural engineer came out last week. I gave him everything he needed to get the calculations for adding dead load to the floor above and after a few days we met up for coffee and he handed over his calculations. He had already confirmed on the phone earlier that even three layers could be beefed up (I was enquiring about 2). After coffee I took a close look at his numbers and to my amazement he had calculated it all with joists based on 12" centers where I had expressly mentioned to him on-site that my major concern was under the kitchen where the spacing changes to 19.2" centers and there's 8000lbs of granite countertops, kitchen cabinets, a fridge etc. Etc. His response "oh you wanted me to do that too?" :shock:

andy, congrats on the baby (again!). i'll be watching this thread closely, I'm trying to come up with some ideas for a new studio as well, also round #2 for me... It was nice to hear that the exact sqft of floor space is somewhat flexible. good luck with sketchup... i know everyone here uses it, and I used it for my first studio build, but I bought ($100), Home Designer a couple years ago to play with some floor plan ideas, but I might just upgrade to the Pro version next week... it's a lot faster and easier to use than sketchup (believe it or not)... since it can draw in the walls, framing, etc for you... If I have time next week, I'll try and draw up your plan and see what happens... kevin

Hey Kevin! It's great to see a familiar face around here. I was wondering what had happened to many of the friends made during the last build. I'm excited to learn more about your next build. Did you move? Are you still in Morgantown? Our new place is quite a bit closer to WV - perhaps an hour or less from the border now. I'm intrigued to learn more about Home Designer and would love to see what you can do. Can you import files to get a head start. Do let me know if you need me to send an export in a particular format. I for one really struggled at first with Sketchup - it's such a paradigm shift from any software I've used before, not to mention working in 3d. But I've dedicated the past few weeks to learning it and have found Sketchup for Dummies to be a superb way to learn. I actually feel pretty confident with it now and am hoping that my designing skills can catch up to a similar level. I've been trying out various different configurations but have yet to find something I really like. I'll post something later to show my best plan yet to give you an idea. There is a Ruby plugin for sketchup that automates building framing detail for walls, ceilings and floors, but I've only just started playing with that. For now I'm still at the stage where I'm testing room shapes and sizes in my available space based on known room ratios. I'd been making great progress until this big snow storm this week. Did you guys get hit hard too? All the best and great to see you back again - so happy to be sharing the journey with a familiar friend. Andy.

"ruby console to automate..." you mean programming! argh! i'm fairly technical, but still can't handle programming tasks... so to give you a sample of what I was doing with home designer... I attached a pdf of a studio plan i'ev been toying with. now, there's good and bad to this program... first, it costs money... second, it's not very compatible with many other applications... so i'll have to check on the import/export functions... that being said, i currently have the cheapest version, and i have exported the file out to cad files. another issue is that i can't currently control the actual wall layers, i have to use what they give me... but thats only restricted to this version... hence me looking at the Pro version, where you can control that... one major positive is that it can give you a fairly accurate materials list! and it does everything in both 2D and 3D, but it's really easy to place things in either way... yes, still in morgantown. I'm looking at building a new house (and studio) from scratch this year. I am still in the planning stage and trying to choose a plan that will suite my needs and that I can afford. I haven't been up to Wisp yet this year, but i'm hoping to get up to do some skiing... I also have good friends in cumberland, md, so maybe we could get together over a beer some time? i should have time later this weekend to draw up your plans to see what you think... i'll have to dig through some pictures to post on my old construction posts... cheers! kevin