800 ft2 from scratch + exterior wall ? about Rod's book

Hi everyone, This is my first post to the site though I've been looking at it for a long time. I'm finally starting to pull the money together for this project and am looking for some advice. I'll try to be as concise and detailed as possible here: I'll be building from scratch. My budget is roughly $20,000. On a realistic note, if it cost me $35,000 then I'll still go for it somehow or another. My closest neighbor is 300 ft away, but I live in the woods where it's quiet, without traffic, and sound is noticed when it travels. I play loud music. Think of 100 watt JMPs on 10 and SVT rigs blasting. The studio's main purpose is a practice space for bands, but it needs to have a control room for all the recording gear which includes a computer set up, board, tape machine, and probably 40 rack spaces worth of stuff, then a couch. Pretty standard smallish setup. The jam room should be able to comfortably accommodate 3 half stacks, piano, Farfisa, 2 drum kits, SVT rig, smallish 2nd bass amp and a few other random things. My immediate inclination is to skimp more on the control room than the live room, as it will be used less frequently. I am planning on using 2 hotel style heat/cooling units, 1 per each room. I talked to a contractor who told me that slab was my cheapest and easiest option. My thoughts were to have a crew lay the slab and build the outside of the building so that it is essentially dried in, with tar paper on the roof and Tyvek wrapped on the outside, then I and my friends would begin working. I'd like to build all of the inside walls as per Rod Gervais book suggest, as double walls with multiple layers of drywall (a question regarding load-bearing exterior walls will follow). There needs to be a window between the control room and the jam room. Other than that, it would be nice to have a few iso booths for guitars/bass, and I love the SAE model with the CR angled, but I think I would need too much square footage to pull that model off within my budget, and converting corners to closets and running non-parallel walls scares me because I feel like 800 square feet (which seems to be already pushing my budget) is already borderline too tight. In terms of sound isolation from the outside world, my priority is high on this. I would love to be able to play drums at 1am if so inclined, without bugging people (who wouldn't?). In terms of studios/sounds that I like, my preference lies with live, big sounding rooms. If I could build Electrical (Albini's studio), I would. However, budgets are in place, more or less, but much less than that! The other important consideration is that my Sketchup file is 20'x40'x10'. I'm not stuck on any exact dimensions, whatever works best and doesn't go far beyond 800 ft2 or the rough budget is fine with me. That's just what I drew up. Also worth noting is that I am planning on using a traditional low A pitched roof on top, with shingles. And the exterior will be cedar siding to match the house. That said, my questions are: 1. Can anyone offer suggestion of how to maximize the space better to acommodate my needs? 2. Rod Gervais' book (excellent book!) focuses primarily on interior walls (room within a room). I know this was already semi-addressed in a previous post, but if the general formula is mass/air/mass, and the interior wall would normally go drywall / studs+insulation / studs+insulation / drywall, what is the proper formula if the bounding wall is an exterior load bearing wall? As a final note, I think it's completely amazing this forum exists and that amazingly skilled people are willing to take their personal time to help people that lack the knowledge. It's one of those things that makes this community so powerful and engaging to be involved with. So my props, thank you all very much for everything you've done and keep doing! Best, Dave ps, I stole the control desk and couch from one of your files John, I hope you're not upset!

I am planning something similar: about 80-90m2 and as soon as I find a place I will be building the thing from scratch. One of my layouts is a 13x6m2 buidling. I have attached the layout. I have been figuring out dozens of layouts and for about 80m2 and the need of a good sized recording room, toilet, storage, iso booth and a good sized control room, this is the best I can come up with. I don't know what building costs in your area are and how much you can save, but I am estimating about €75k-100k to get this project completely done. That will still mean that I need to do quite some thing myself. I plan to do all the acoustic treatment myself... Good luck, Dirk

That's a lot more realistic Dirk. To build a standard house here in Australia ( which I reckon would be similar to the US) is around $1200/sqm or approx $120/sqft. So an 800 sqft house would be $96,000. cheers john

tasker wrote:

2. Rod Gervais' book (excellent book!) focuses primarily on interior walls (room within a room). I know this was already semi-addressed in a previous post, but if the general formula is mass/air/mass, and the interior wall would normally go drywall / studs+insulation / studs+insulation / drywall, what is the proper formula if the bounding wall is an exterior load bearing wall?

Dave, Read through the book again - I deal with exterior wall assemblies (such as you might find in a garage) and indicate methods of adding mass to the existing exterior layer> I also discuss the use (if you cannot construct a room within the existing room) of resilient channels - RISC Clips and Hat sections - or even just adding mass to the wals themselves......... Da book covers much more than just rooms within rooms. Sincerely, Rod

Thanks for all the replies guys. Dirk, your layout looks really nice and functional. I'll have to play around with that idea a bit. I'll also go back through the book before I post up here again. I should be getting estimates of the rough work from the contractor today, then talking to someone else soon. I know my budget probably seems a bit unrealistically low, but I was hoping to be able to get a crew to put in the foundation and then build up unfinished walls/roof for me, allowing me to take my time from there with the inside finishing. From that point, I think I could almost everything else myself (lots of construction friends/electricians), so I was hoping to swing it without all the fancy parts, but a functional, good sounding space relatively isolated from the outside world. In anycase, I will be getting some more solid info in the next few days. Until then I'll keep browsing through the archive here. I'll probably have a ton of questions next time! Thanks. -Dave