Central air -Home based studio

Hi, I have been browsing a bit on this site and it seems like a great place. I am looking at houses to buy with a big basement for a studio and when I see the vents running for central air it scares the ---- out of me. Is this a big concern? I am planning on builing it mostly myself and I want to keep the costs down. I am worried about a loud hum of rushing air as well as the music escaping from the studio to bother neighbors. On the other hand I am looking forward to have a new studio with decent air circulation since the one I have now is a closed off box for the most part. Should I stay away from homes with central air running thru the ceiling? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank You,

You don't have to stay away from them but you DO need to pay attention to it. You asked about central air "running through the ceiling." Is this the ceiling of the basement or of the house? If it's in the ceiling of the house, you've got a long way to run ducting to kill the noise. You didn't mention what kind of music you are going to be playing/recording in your basement studio. What kind of isolation requirements are you going to have. How big a space are you going to need? If you're house shopping, pay attention to where/how close neighbors will be, floor construction between the basement and house, construction of the basement walls, basement ceiling height (very important). I wouldn't limit myself to a basement at this point. Keep your options open. len

thanks len, BTW I enjoyed browsing your diary, very cool. Most of these places I've seen have this ducting in the basement ceiling that leads to all the other areas of the house. If I get a house with this central air ducting, my plan would be to build a very, very beefy ceilling and I am on the lookout for the highest ceiling possible so I can do that. I am working with rock, and a lot of vox and guitar overdubs. I am deffenitely looking at places with space from neighbors but it is a little packed here in the suburbs of NYC, but some gems can be found.

You might be able to remove any metal ducting you find and replace it with fiberglass based duct board. It's really easy to work with (look at the ducting I made in my build) and I can attest to the fact that it deadens any noise. You also can put silencers just outside and then just inside the room. See Sharward's build diary to see what he's planning for HVAC. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about basement issues here (VERY few houses have basements here) and buildings are very cheap. len

Ithink I saw some tubular ducting and a 90deg rectangle duct in your photos, but I wasn't sure what it was. most of the places with central air have the metal rectangular ducts. I guess that would be replaced with fiberboard ducting. IIRC superduct is the product that would be used to replace all that rectangular stuff. Your rectagular duct looked home-made, or maybe it was just the 90deg joint that u made.

guavatone wrote:

Your rectagular duct looked home-made, or maybe it was just the 90deg joint that u made.

I don't know if I should take offense to this or not! :-) I guess you could say it was home made in that I didn't buy it from and HVAC guy. I used EnduraGold (1") which is the OC equivalent of the JM SuperDuct. I'm not sure which pictures you were talking about. Was it the little 90 degree boxes that went in the control room or the BIG ducts in the back room of the studio? It's really not hard to make either if you get the right tools (V groove cutter, etc), and take a little time. It really helped me to make the "paper doll" model first for the little ones because it had so many bends and surfaces. In hindsight, if I had to do it again, I would probably cut separate panels and tape them together rather than trying to fold up the unit out of one piece. The two big ones in the back (more recent pictures) are just long rectangular boxes so they were pretty simple (except for mounting them!) len