Private home studio in Orkney Isles

Hello everyone After years of dreaming and watching the studios come together on this site, I am just starting the process of designing my own private home studio. The following is a list of the design requirements and some other relevant information: - Although it is a private home studio, I intend to have multiple rooms, with a nice large live room suitable for full rock band practise. I would like to be able to record or practise with the band at anytime of day or night. - I am planning to create the studio in two phases: Phase 1 - the outside shell of the building to make the building watertight, Phase 2 - the internal of the studio. The timeframe would be over 2 years for everything. - In the future when I don’t want to record anymore (or sell the property), I would like the building to be able to easily convert into a self-catering living area by simply removing the recording furniture. Therefore I would prefer that the room walls would not be splayed/angled. - The budget for the project would be around £100k (max) for the whole building. - The intention is to have the studio built as an extension to my existing garage so that the wall and roof profile are kept the same. This restricts the size and shape of the studio to an ‘L’ shape and means that the maximum (external) size studio I can probably get through the planning department would be 6.5m wide x 20m long x 3.8m high, with a ‘lean to’ at the bottom area giving another 2m width with 10m length (see diagram 1 & 2). All doors and windows would be on my side of the studio, not on the neighbours side. - I live in a small town with neighbours all around me. The area where the studio will be runs in line with a boundary wall between my property and my nearest neighbour’s property. The neighbours property is 3.5m away and the studio would be parallel with their house (see diagram 1 & 2). - I have various books on studio design including Rod Gervais book Home Recording Studio Build it Like the Pros. My main concern is that the studio is very close to my neighbour and I am unsure whether I can get the required amount of isolation to have full rock band practices at any time of day or night. Traditional building methods in this area would be to use block cavity walls with a timber kit. I believe the block cavity is primarily to prevent moisture ingress. The problem with this is that it is a 3 leaf system and it would require vents in the outer leaf which also weakens the isolation level. Also, this method is more time consuming. Therefore I have decided to build the outer shell of the building using Insulated Concrete Formwork (ICF). This method uses polystyrene blocks to act as the formwork for the building walls and is then filled with concrete to make solid 6 inch (or more) concrete walls. The benefit is that it has insulation on the outside and inside so is super insulated (for self catering purposes), and it is also a single leaf. I would then frame the inside of the building using the normal studio wall techniques, with the internal ceiling of the studio resting on the floating walls (this would be part 2 of the project). Also this method would not require cavity ventilation so the isolation would be much better. In order for the roof to meet the same isolation level as the walls, I was looking into making a 6 inch (minimum) flat concrete ceiling over the whole main studio, above which the main pitched roof would sit. In addition to this I was going to make the ‘lean to’ a pitched concrete roof (I havent decided the actual pitch of roof yet, and it would likely be lower pitch than shown in the drawing so making it concrete would be slightly easier). This would mean that the whole building had a concrete roof which would hopefully dramatically increase isolation level. My thinking here was to go for the ‘concrete bunker’ approach to maximise outer shell isolation. Diagram 3 shows the concrete roof area in red. Given the above, the height of the building would be approx 3.8m (minus the depth lost for the roof support plates). Given the information above, I was looking for some assistance with the following: - Being so close to the neighbour, is it even possible that I can get the required level of isolation to do full rock band practices/recordings at any time of day or night? I appreciate that the forum instructions say to give details of loudness etc, but this is hard to do as there is no building in place yet. - Would the concrete roof idea give the most amount of isolation versus a normal wood framed roof or is it a waste of money/time? Thanks Ian Tulloch