Patio Studio, Pics w SketchUp

HI everyone. I just spent some time with Skethcup while scouring this website trying to design my studio, please see link: http://marcdobson.com/studio/MD_studio.htm My name is Marc, I’m a gigging musician and you like to know more about me go to: www.marcdobson.com I like to thank everyone who’s helped contribute to this forum and John; it’s a great resource which is going to take me weeks to comprehend everything. Thank-you John for putting up some SketchUp studio designs on this forum, I’ve been studying and trying to borrow from them.

The purpose of room is rehearsal, live and mix room as well as an office and a general place to escape  Updates: 1. This post and design A attached has been updated, I now have many design options. 2. I've thrown out the A designs below, I am trying to decide on a version of B as listed below. Go to this thread now: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5580 AND please don't post to this one, I don't want it bumped to the top. :roll: I am in the design process and have (many) options. Parallel walls with acoustic treatment like a bedroom studio design (last resort) OR angled walls with Speaker soffits, slot resonators, absorbers and so on. My room location has a size limitation and my own 2 door requirement. (I had a hard time letting go of a window) One existing door goes to garage; I want access for bringing my live rack and guitars in and out. The other door is a new to my patio with easy access to my house, with the door open I will see into the house. With the walls up and sub floor I will have something like a 8’ 4” W, 11’ L, 8’ H space to work with. (with Design A) My design below is mimicked off of John Sayers, Paddy Studio (available in SketchUp on this site) and from pictures of the container studio. I’ve adapted it to fit my space, speakers and so on. Please see design below. I have additional pictures of the room as is: http://marcdobson.com/studio/MD_studio.htm The existing walls are concrete block on the north and west with stucco and paint. The walls have a sponge type, rough finish. The west wall has existing door to garage. The new walls on the south and east will be 6’ steel stud frame. ( correction: new walls are now 2x4 outer, 4" space and 2x4 inside out inner wall, see below) The outer leaf has to end with stucco (concrete). I think it’s going to be ¾’ plywood, MDV vapor barrier, mesh then the stucco. The wall will be insulated with fluffy fiberglass insulation. The inner leaf will be 3 (or 2) layers of gypsum board and I’ve not decided on including RC strips or not. I am going to float a sub floor and still have to confirm using a vapor barrier, rubber or neoprene, 2x4 joists, 2 layers of ¾” plywood then underlay and wood flooring. I am planning to install a drop ceiling as well, but I’ve not completed figured out the ceiling design yet… the current ceiling is also finished with stucco and I believe it’s a plywood layer that’s attached to the frame. My low pitched attic above currently has no insulation which I have to put in for Florida building code. I plan to put joists under current ceiling, insulation, RC strips and gypsum board at and angle… and then create and angle false ceiling to install bass traps. From my new sub floor to existing ceiling I will have 8’ to work with. Is my acoustic design to much for this size room? Did I miss anything? All measurements in this layout are to proportion because every inch counts in this small space. Thanks. Marc

That's good Marc - you've resolved it very well - No it's not too much treatment for a room that size - the smaller the room the more treatment required because all the reflections are short - I wouldn't put in that diffusor for the same reason - the reflections are too short. If you are going to float the floor and drop a ceiling I'd go for two 2 x 4 outer walls instead of the one 6" with the inner wall sitting on the new floor totally isolated from the outer wall. Don't forget about Aircon - if you are sound proof you are airtight so some fresh air will be required. cheers john

Thank you, for the compliment John. *** Note this is an updated post Yes the diffuser does not belong at the back wall, it’s a typo, I meant a rear wall absorber like on this page http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm I got confused with the amount of info I’ve just started to learn about acoustics. I had thrown that idea out when I read the difusion page http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... fusion.htm on the SAE site and realized how effectiveness of slot resonators http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... encies.htm . The AC or Aircon, I live in Florida about 10 miles from the Kennedy Space Center. I would not make it 10 minutes in that room during the summer without Aircon. I have a newer quite central Aircon unit made by Train, I got that installed when we bought this house 2 years ago. The unit is located about 8 feet away from this room in my garage. My neighbor owns an AC company and has volunteered to help me install ducts (with silencer?) when the when the time comes. I do need to design the ducts for the building permit. Double Wall on floated floor and drop ceiling. Again thank-you for the compliment but I realize I have miserably failed with this layout on conserving space. I did not incorperate a double wall because of space and left that option out thinking a staggered wall on 2x6 plates with 2x4 studs would be better. I just went and studied the Walls & Ceilings page again http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... /Walls.htm and realized I had missed the point of your “inside out wall” with slot resonator built in. Upon (re) writing this post I am updating the design in my 1st post, the old design for comparison is useless. The design in 1st post I am going to refer to as Design A and incorperates: 2X4 Outer wall Exterior is ½ plywood and ½ of Stucco (Concrete) Outer wall filled with R19 fluffy fiberglass insulation Option is to put a ”cleat” of plywood and/or gypsum board cut to fit inbetween studs and glue/seal to plywood and studs. I do not fully understand a cleat yet, I’ve borrowed the idea from: Sharward's Studio - Partial Garage Conversion, ISOLATED Slab, pics seen here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... &start=375 Next is a 4” space between outer wall and floated sub floor with innners walls floated on top of that.. The inner wall is 2X4, inside out. With 2 layers of ½” gypsum board and 2” of rigid insulation. The 4” air space between walls will actually have space of 1” inbetween rigd fiberglass and fluffy fiberglass of outer wall. The cavities of the inner 2X4 walls will be used to incorperate slot resonators, speaker soffit, bass traps and absorbers. I’ve now thought of a Design B. Note on my web site I have a Horrible Design C http://marcdobson.com/studio/MD_studio.htm With my design A, I end up with a really small space with somewhere around 70 Sqft a space in the room. Since I am planning on spending a fair amount of time and money building this room I am looking at adding space by kocking out part of the concrete block wall on the west side and using some of my garage in the room. I would end up with an L shaped room. In Design A I have taken the south Wall as far as will will go so that it is 6” from my exisisting patio door. With design B the south and west walls placement becomes a varaible effecting the sqft of both patio and garage. Trying to figure out if it's worth it or not to knock out the wall in terms of sqft gained is currently baffling me. In my next post I will show pics of options for Design B. Marc

OK, the point of this post is to determine whether or not my Design B will add enough square footage to my room (Design A = 70 Square feet) to warrant knocking out a concrete wall separating my patio from the garage. 1st please see http://marcdobson.com/studio/MD_studio.htm to review layout of my house and rooms adjacent to the patio and garage. Then see picture of Design B Options below. 1st question is can I knock the wall out? Only an engineer can answer that but I need to see how much space I’ll gain before I spend money on an engineer. My guess is that I can, but I may have to add some additional support… my house is only one story. 2nd question could be after reviewing layout of house is why not put my studio in the garage? My wife might melt if she has to run to her car in the rain, we need storage & the patio area is the only unused portion of our house under roof. I am writing this post as try I to figure out the jig saw puzzle I’ve created with Design B. If any body wishes to play with the puzzle or comment on next section of writing, be my guest. I had a few questions which I’ve found answers to for the puzzle: What’s the best splay for side walls? 12 degrees minimum, 15 is better; increase of 1 or 2 has little effect so best increase by 3’s if you can afford the floor space and 30 degrees is best at the front of room. This is my simple minded copied from other posts in this forum. How many degrees should parallel walls be set of by? 24 degrees, given the circumstances In a varied depth broad band slot resonator what’s the minimum depth the deepest section should have, without confusing the s%it out of me? 8” is effective; 12” seems to be most common and go as deep as you can if you have the space. What effect does having a slot resonator only on one side wall or having 2 different size slot resonators or absorbers on side walls have on the acoustic symmetry of the room? I don’t have an answer for this one yet. Here’s a note for the moderates of this forum and users. I have found the search engine with in this site pretty hard to use, so I switched to using the Google search engine on this site. I’ve got the Google tool bar installed in my browser, I type in what I’m looking for while on this site and then click the drop down button next to the search and hit “current site”. The results are more relevant and the words I searched for pop up in the Google tool bar. Clicking on the word in the tool box allows me to scroll to every time my search word appears on the web page. Back to my room: Option 1 & 2 shows the placement of new WN wall. My main fuse box is located on the SW 2X4 wall. New WN walls and room must incorporate fuse box into room with an access door or open corner, or the WN wall must not go past the fuse box. There is a 2nd box for my AC unit located just under this box which sticks out 5” from the wall. Both boxes are about 5’ off the floor. Fuse panel is 4’ 2” from inside of existing Concrete Block West South Wall (the wall to be knocked out) AC unit is 6’ 8” from same wall. Space in between AC and fuse box is 1’ 3”. Option 3 is the placement of new SE wall. I’ve decided to start this wall a minimum of 1’ from my patio door to family room allowing the SE wall to be 10’ 5” (inner room size) from the NE wall. If design allows SE wall to move further away from the patio door, increasing the square footage of the patio then that is OK. We still want to use the smaller patio. Either the NW or WN new walls need a door allowing access to studio from the garage. The SE wall needs a door to the patio. (If this design fails I may exclude the garage door… but I really, really want that door) All measurements shown in Design B Options are inner room dimensions. The yellow = outer walls with outer layers. The red = air space and inner walls that are inside out with gypsum board layers on the outer side. Absorbers, traps & slot resonators will take advantage of these inner wall 3 ½” deep frame cavities. Inner walls will be on floated sub floor and ceiling will be dropped with details yet to come. And… I bought me a Decibel meter today. Marc

OK, Design B. Couple side notes 1st. My 3 ½ year son was able to hit 98 on my new decibel meter in a temper tantrum with me standing 5 feet away from him. I’m jealious. A drummer/soundman friend of mine is re-building his studio. He had a building in his back yard destroyed by last years hurricanes, the new building has a few grandfathered building permit bonuses and will replace his current studio located in his house. He’s got a 25’ X 15’ slab and is having 6” solid concrete walls poured for the exterior and for the wall seperating live and mix rooms. Instead of a window he is using video cameras. Design B1, B2 and B3 are below. All are rough layouts. Design B1 has control room facing west and incorperates a doors in the new NW 2X4 outer walls. The design would include my fuse box in the studio. I can not figure a way effectively build an access door to the panel with a slot resonator wall, speaker soffit and or bass trap in the way. So I dropped this. I did not layout a Design, say B4 with control room facing west and the fuse box in the garage. I skipped this because once the doors are put in the new NW walls and space is left between the door and the desk the square footage from desk to rear wall would drop to much, I think. Although I still could have a wider rear wall with B4. Design B2 & B3 are in the same pic, control room faces east and the new SE outer wall I’ve place sqaure to the room & new patio. This new 2X4 SE wall and inner SE wall with double doors could have some funky angles. The west sides of these inner and/or outer walls could be further from the room then the east sides allowing for some niftty acoustic treatment. The new patio would have a unique shape. But I would be going into the catogory of an unproven studio design, I think. Design B2 also incorperates Fuse Box into the room and an access door would have to be made. The acoustic treatment would have to work around this door and it would have to meet building code. The layer of gypsum board or drywall on the same wall (SW existing 2X4 wall) as the fuse box would have to come off to not create a triple layer effect. Design B3 just moves the rear walls up enough so that fuse box is in garage, however these new rear walls could be built at a couple angles allowing the fuse box to remain in garage, leave room for acoustic treatment in the room and not reflect sound back to the sweet spot. Am I getting confusing? If your not I am. The point of Design B’s is to aquire more square footage in the room and warrant knocking out a concrete wall with an unkown probably large additional expence. Note to those who use Skethcup: Painting a surface with the 12” tiles allows for a quick visual reference to sqaure footage of an area. Rough Sqaure footage comparison. Design A Inside room: 10’ 9” L x 7’ 7” W, sqft = 80, but -10 for acoustics, -15 for space inbetween door and desk, - 14 for desk, leaves 50 sqft of usable space. Design B2 Inside room: 14’ 3” L x 8’ 5” W, sqft = 120, but -10 for acoustics, -14 for desk, leaves 116 sqft of usable space. Design B3 Inside room: 11’ 9” L x 8’ 5” W, sqft = 99, but -10 for acoustics, -14 for desk, leaves 75 sqft of usable space. Design B4 my guess is 75 sqft of usable space. Armed with this info I’m going to look at a Design A2 next which will delete my beloved door to the garage, and have the room face north. Any suggestions or points to where I am making huge mistakes in my designs will be gladly accepted. If any moderator or other user points out clear confusion or unnecessary info in my post writing, I will gladly revise or delete. Half my goal now with writing these posts is to clarify things for myself as well as trying to help the forum with my novice approach to my studio. Marc

Design A2 is below, I’d have about 50 sqft of usable space left. New south outer wall could be at a funky angle to help double door angles. Door and acoustic treatment placement on rear wall likely to change if I decide to go with this one. My next step is to figure out cost and possilbilty of knocking out that wall between patio and garage. A variation of Design B2 would seem to be the winner, if it’s cost effective. My budget was $3,000 when I started thinking about this. I don’t know where I’ll end up with a Design B. Time to make some calls. Marc