Lou's Studio - Construction Phase

Coooooool! 8) For those who don't know why I would care... Here's my ride! Hey Lou -- maybe someday we can swap RX-8s -- it sure would be fun to have a right-hand drive over here for a while! :lol: --Keith :mrgreen:

Hi Guys –hope you’re all OK. Keith, that was a classic last remark Mate, made me laugh like hell! It could of course be my dry humour, but there’s so many ways to interpret that one Dude. In any event it’s Sarah’s car – cool license plate btw. So then, to the update. After the frustrations earlier in the week, we’ve ended up pretty much on the ball, and we still have a manic weekend ahead of us, to get as far into the next stage as possible, while Phil and Dave are on their respective holidays. Loads of pics for your perusal – so here they come. Enjoy! This is what I should have bought first time around. 40 mm down rejects. Not this! For those of you like me who weren’t aware, rejects are not broken old bricks! They are simply sea based aggregates that wont go through the machine when they make ballast, pea shingle, fine grit etc. Time to load them into the tipper. Then dump them on the chill-out area floor to start ‘making up’ the ground. Level out and ‘wacker plate’ to pre-marked blue spray line. A real tidy job. :D The corner of the retaining wall gets underway. Then crack on with working out the ‘step work’ for the bricks. Believe it or not, this will eventually be the steps leading up to the garden! :roll: Then it’s time to rake in the sand. Then wacker plate to look like a pool table. This is the stuff I was talking about in an earlier post – ‘Celotex’. It’s expensive but really does the job. The new gas and electric meter boxes are cut into position and the gas box is sealed in. Studio kitchen waste placed into position. Retaining wall ‘step work’ complete and looking amazing – each step is 5 ½ bricks, and follows the topography of the garden perfectly. Now it’s time for the 1000 gauge membrane – which will of course remain protected from the ‘rejects’ forever due to the sand. Now the celotex can be cut and placed into position. The last bit of membrane. Ready for the ‘Upstands’. This storm water drain right on Phil’s new brickwork has to be moved further down the drive. :( It has to be ‘rodded’ through, and ‘made good’ to connect to this. However, this baby is rusted solid to its frame and even the digger couldn’t pull it up, so we’re obviously going to have a great time tomorrow! :evil: Mate of a Mate crimps the gas supply ready for cut and re-route to new wall box. £150.00 instead of £572.74 (with a 5 week timescale!) :wink: Then the new gas supply is connected to its new location – and yes, we have no gas at the moment. :!: Chill-out area upstands all cut and placed into final position. The next lot of concrete arrives – (this time Gen 3 / slump 50 with fibre) basically an over engineered oversite mix. Oh and it’s me driving the dumper!

Concentrating like hell, sporting new haircut, and having the responsibility of driving inch perfect so as to not damage Phil’s new wall, or spilling too much muck. My heart was beating I can tell you. Dave gives me the thumbs up as if to say “you’re doing’ alright geezer” Then it’s just simply a case of ‘tamping out’ and getting the snooker table finish prior to screed in a couple of weeks time. Easy really - NOT! Phil – ever the ingenious – sorts out the final look of the concrete with an interesting adaptation of tools and resources. Cool. 8) That’s it for the moment Guys, as I said at the top of this post, we’ve given ourselves some crazy targets this weekend: Oversite for studio prepped – ready for audio/midi ducting and steel mesh. Chill-out area soak away dug and prepped. Storm water manhole removed, rodded and relocated. Front of studio backfilled (bar electric ‘cos they can’t do their bit until the 28th Aug :evil: ) ready for Phil’s return. Garden steps and the rest of the retaining wall footings etc. We sure gonna’ have some fun and aggro of course. Warm regards as always, Lou. 8)

wow! 8)

Holy crap -- if I had Span and company working with me on my project, I would have been done in a few weeks' time! :lol: This thread inspires awe! 8) --Keith :mrgreen:

Wow, you don't mess around, do you Lou? Impressive to be sure....

Evening Chaps! What a weekend! God only knows, I’m definitely one of the club now – loads to show you, loads to tell you (good and bad! progress and aggro etc) but, as you all know, high-info posts take time to put together so, if you don’t mind, it’ll have to wait just for the minute! Glenn, really great to hear from you, dude. Hope you’re OK. Keith, thanks as always. Jwl, No, mate – I don’t mess about! Let’s face it, if you’re gonna do it you might as well do it properly. Now for the high pressure, high stress, dumbass question: Can I run my speaker cable (for all five speakers in the control room), through the same ducting as I want to run my audio cable? I think not but, if not, no probs – I can just run another duct north-to-south on the plan with a T connector coming up in the control room floor alongside the tie line ducting. Rod, if you catch this, all mains will be above grade - which I assume you to mean slab (concrete/screed etc) and all LV - which I assume you to mean low voltage (audio, midi, tie lines etc) below grade. I am intending to book the RC35 concrete pour for the studio floor this Saturday morning but I still have a building site instead of an oversite and intend, quite obviously, to make sure that I don’t screw up now! Regards Lou 8)

What kind of "duct" are you using for your audio cables? I hope it's not ordinary PVC normally used for water... You shouldn't (can't?) use regular PVC plumbing fittings for wiring conduit. See "Kathy's Barn Conversion" thread, page 2 for discussion on this. She made the same mistake and corrected it before she got too far along in her build. See also fender1973's "Mic Cable Conduit Help" thread. And absolutely don't miss andy_eade's "Warning - Audio Cable runs also subject to code / inspection" thread. Hopefully you're not, but since I'm not sure (yet), I figured I'd better post this, just in case, because you move awfully fast, mate! :twisted: --Keith :mrgreen:

Hi Guys – What a weekend we’ve had! Some really good stuff, and some really bad stuff. Keith – thanks for looking out for me Mate, please feel free to do that anytime you see fit, two heads are always better than one. :wink: Re: your point, I have a Mate who works on the ground work side of a national cable t.v. company, he has kindly offered to source my ducting from his stocks. It’s green heavy duty plastic tubing specifically designed to carry low voltage cables under the ground, and meets all necessary regulations. Now for the good and bad news – here comes the update, enjoy! Well as you can see, I definitely over-ordered on the Celotex. I also over-specified as well since this is 100mm, and the regs’ only require 75mm, so this is all being returned. There’s a story to this shot. On Friday evening we all met up for a drink, and Phil bet Span that he wouldn’t be able to get that manhole out in one piece. Dumb bet – it was out in 15 minutes! :shock: Then it was straight on to the chill-out area soakaway. Top soil backfilled behind the retaining wall, and the central ground level brought up. Span loads me up with shingle. Mind those patio doors Dude! Then we’re all in such good spirits, (lovely weather, job going well etc), we decide to swap places! :lol: :lol: Soakaway backfilled, and the adaptor to take the chill-out area downpipe is in its final position. The front of the studio gets the backfill treatment. Then on to relocating the storm water manhole. I get to rod it through. If you recall, there used to be a dwarf leylandi above that drain, there was so much debris in there, that this pipe has been blocked for years. The most boring pic of the thread, yet vitally important that this pipe is clear. Pete gets on with prepping up the base for the new manhole in its new location. Everything gets connected up. Voila, all in position! And working perfectly. Time for yet more backfill on the new manhole. I had to move those bloody blocks again. This is the current patio area at the rear of the studio, as you can see it’s around two brick courses too high and so…………..yup, had to come out. Yes, he did manage to get both machines around the back of the house! However, not without nerves of steel. There’s safety stickers all over these machines, one of which (on this one) warns that the vehicle must not navigate inclines greater than 20 degrees – unladen, btw, I’ll let you Guys judge for yourselves. :shock: :shock: Very little room to manoeuvre round here. However, we now have the side and rear of the studio all the same level. And yet more crap to get rid of! We’ve never really been keen on the look of this, and of course it doesn’t match the retaining wall. Guess what? You guessed it! Introducing Span’s little brother – Jamie, who popped round to see how we were getting on. The last bit of patio to go. Now we have a real mountain on our drive – time for grab no 6 and probably 7 as well! This area to the left of the studio front will, (believe it or not), become a central single width set of steps, with two gradual ramps with handrails either side. This is to allow for disabled access, and heavy amps / drum hardware cases etc, to be wheeled round to the back entrance where of course the live room will be. At this point, we were all feeling really good. Pete, Span and me had had a great day Saturday, Span and I had a laugh talking over old times and cracking on for most of Sunday. The weather was with us again so we decided we’d do another hour and rip out the last remaining area of patio when – disaster struck. I was driving another load in the dumper ready to tip on the pile when I looked to my right and saw an irate neighbour at the end of my drive with a look to flatten an army. "What the bloody hell’s all this noise? It’s Sunday, we don’t need this aggravation, I’m not happy, I can’t even open my windows" etc, blah blah. Obviously this put me in a very different mood immediately. Span said "what’s up Mate?" I told him and he said. “Ah don’t worry about it – She’s just being bloody awkward.” Well I did worry – so I stopped both machines, sent Span home, called it a day and went over and apologised. I thought that was enough, but just to be on the safe side, Monday morning I wrote a short letter explaining our predicament with the appalling weather, budget and timescale etc, copied it to every neighbour in the close, (13 to be precise), and thought no more of it. Well, no more at least until I had a visit from my local Environmental Heath Officer at 4.30pm Mon afternoon. “Are you the owner of the property Sir?” :evil: I thought, "here we go!" “you’re building a Recording Studio aren’t you?” :evil: Oh bollocks! Well as it turns out he was actually a nice enough bloke and fully understood my predicament, in fact, he even told me he’d had a go at voice overs and was well aware of the way studios were insulated for isolation and absorption, so I guess that was something. However, he was of course duty bound to explain that now complaints had been received, the position was as follows: Keith – I’m sure you’ll want to excerpt this one! The permitted hours of (so called noisy) construction work in a residential area, are: 8.00am – 6.00pm Mon to Fri 8.00am – 1.00pm Sat Nothing on Sun. What this means in reality my friends, is that my whole project has come to a grinding halt! I’ve had to ‘off-hire’ the machines because there’s no point in them being sat idle, far worse still, is that last night I had to tell Span that he and Pete were now ‘off the job’ since they’re only able to help for a couple of hours in the evenings, and at the weekends. All this aggro because of one petty neighbour, and we’ve only actually worked for part of just two Sundays since the project began! Everyone involved is gutted, this sequence of events has totally screwed me, and needless to say, driven a temporary rift into a 34 year old friendship. We were doing so well. :evil: :evil: :evil: I’ll update more when I’ve figured out the best way to get around this, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, I now have the annoying task of finding builders that I don’t know as well, don’t trust as much, and who certainly won’t be working as hard. Furthermore, you can bet your arse they’ll be more expensive. :evil: :roll: :evil: Yours thoroughly ‘pissed offly’ Lou. 8)

Aloha Lou, Man, oh, man! You were making some incredible progress up until now! I am so sorry to hear about the latest development with your neighbor, but even more so about the strain on your lifelong friendships. It's rare thing to have those one can truly call friends. I truly hope that things will work out with them for you. As for your neighbor, I'm afraid I can relate a bit, as after 10 years of living in peace, we now have a new neighbor that has begun to make demands of us after only a couple of months of moving in. Argh! :evil: :evil: :evil: Take a deep breath, and may you have even more success after this slight setback, my friend. All the best to you and yours, Aloha 8)

All this aggro because of one petty neighbour, and we’ve only actually worked for part of just two Sundays since the project began!

WOW..what a story :evil: ...... But if it makes you feel any better, after I got done framing AND sheeting all the 2nd floor walls for my studio a couple weeks ago, my neighbor went on basically the same type rampage (except mine wasnt noise, it was the size of the building). Anyway, after much thought, and not wanting to put up with her BS, I totally tore down the back half of the 2nd floor and moved the back wall, moved the already framed windows and redesigned and rebuilt the 2nd floor just to keep her happy. :roll: :roll: Afterwards, her husband saw me and said 'The way it was didnt bother me at all, she is just like that!" :evil: plus then my building inspector came out and said "yea, she called us and complained,,,if I were you I would have kept it the way you had it, and just told her to pound sand!" :roll: :shock: So,,,yes neighbor ladies can be a pain in the @ss. lol :lol: As far as your building,,,,how much more do you have to do with the machines? Cant you patch it up with your friends and knock out the rest of the work that requires machines (noise makers)on a Sat AM as best you can? I would almost bet, once that Pile in your driveway is gone (the mess), and the machines are gone,,,,,the neighbors will calm down a bit. I found that depending on the neighbor,,,,sometimes the word "too much noise" translates into actually them just hating "the mess that they now are seeing in their neighborhood" due to construction. Good luck,,, and I would shift the building schedule around as much as possible, and use your friends. They will probably be much cheaper. But before that, I would have those friends over for some beers and drinks and patch things up. Again,,,good luck!! AJ

If your friends are really truly friends - then this should not be an issue with them....... They should rally behind you to help work out a way that they can be the most beneficial to you in your time of need. They certainly should not hold you accountable for either an irate neighbor - or for the regulations that exist in your town........... Sincerely, Rod

Ken - AJ - Rod I've just taken a bit of time out, and fully intended to come back and post an edit saying something along the lines of: Span and Pete are off the job - For a few hours at least. In short Guys - you were all thinking the same as me: I cannot and will not use anyone other than these Guys to finish the groundwork stage, it's just not bloody well fair - they've both worked far too hard already and don't deserve to be put in this position. :evil: I will re confirm my legal position and of course try to patch things up. Now my Gemini (hey Keith) tact is gonna be stretched to the limits. Thank you Gentlemen - you've no idea what a boost the last 10 minutes of reading and writing has been. Well actually of course, as Keith has already pointed out, - you do. Kindest regards to you and yours, (what a bloody forum!) Lou. 8)

Late for a meeting... Gotta run... But just have to offer my support to you, Lou! So sorry you're having to go through this. I had previously looked up construction noise restrictions in my city, and they're much more liberal than the ones you have. You might go look up the language yourself to see if there are any exceptions under which your situation may fall. There may be some kind of "unless necessary" and/or for owner-occupied properties or something. Gotta go! --Keith :mrgreen:

Lou, My City Council actually included very similar "Hours of work" in the Development Consent paperwork they sent me, including "no work Sundays"... but I jackhammered 2 hours on Sunday just to get the job finished. "Residential" type neighbours are quite far away, though... Looks to me like your neighbours will have to put up with noise etc. longer than would have been the case, given the pace you guys normally work. Too bad they couldn't have had a friendly word before going to the authorities... oops, hope I'm not stirring the pot! Good luck with your more "routine" hours! :) Geoff

Hi Guys – hope you’re all doin’ ok! Possibly the briefest yet maybe the most important update so far. First off : Keith – hope the meeting went well Mate, and naturally thank you for taking the time to post when you were clearly in a rush, and of course for the support. Geoff – You’re absolutely right Man, why the hell didn’t she just have a quiet chat before getting her arse in a cramp? :evil: Anyway, as you and others have suggested Keith, I’ve re-checked my position legally, and basically, well, I have no choice but to abide by the rules. There’s no second chance on this one. The Environmental Heath Officer concerned has let me know that my neighbour has his cell phone number, and if She is in anyway concerned that I might be infringing her rights as a public citizen to enjoy the piece and tranquillity of her own home blah blah blah etc, then all She needs to do is contact him, he, in turn will be around to witness, and I get a £1,000.00 noise abatement order slapped on my doorstep! So, now on to much more important stuff. I met with Span and Pete after they finished work this evening. The long and the short of that meeting is that we both understand each others position, we’ve patched things up and they are due back here 7.45am this Saturday to give me a blitz until 1.00pm, then a break, followed by an hour or so hand-tools only tidy up/finish off. We obviously won’t be pouring this weekend but are now scheduled for the final pour on the studio floor next Saturday. This gives me plenty of time to organise and position my ducting, chairs, and mesh. First job is to get the studio floor prepped ready for the Building Inspector to check the oversite at the beginning of next week. Chill-out area glass is being fitted from Monday, so I’m pretty sure that this time next week it’ll all look totally different again. Meanwhile, two really miserable pics to show what we’ve been up against, and to prove that this ain’t a bed of roses……………………………………YET! Dave on the all new 20 tonne Grab Lorry in the pissing rain again!! :( First shot of Studio 4’s iso booth, back right of control room, and brand new kitchen facility! Honest! (Well we Muso’s have gotta have vision – haven’t we?) :wink: One more off-topic pic but it’ll put a smile on Keith’s face……speaking of license plates, check this out, Dude, bearing in mind we in the U.K. are really restricted as to what we can legally display! :) Stay tuned Thanks as always, guys Lou 8)

Lou wrote:

. . . all She needs to do is contact him, he, in turn will be around to witness, and I get a £1,000.00 noise abatement order slapped on my doorstep!

According to Google: UK£ 1 000.00 = 1 991.5 US$ Yikes!!! :shock: But, to be honest, if those are the rules, then those are the rules, and, yes, the lady is entitled to her peaceful enjoyment of her home... :roll: That is, after all, why I'm going to such extent to build such a soundproof drum bunker, eh? ;-) :twisted:

Lou wrote:

One more off-topic pic but it’ll put a smile on Keith’s face……speaking of license plates, check this out, Dude, bearing in mind we in the U.K. are really restricted as to what we can legally display! :)

:D :D :D --Keith :mrgreen:

Hi Guys Hope you’re all OK. I have to start this update with something of an apology because, basically, I have been so wrapped up in my own project and its setbacks that I haven’t had time to try and offer help to others. :oops: For what its worth: Ro – what a project, man. And I’m no structural engineer but I would have to concur with John that the crack in that wall is almost certainly due to movement in the foundations, which is not necessarily a bad thing but still needs to be sorted. Eric – thank you for the kind recommendation, sir. But I assure you that my organisational skills are nothing more than ‘satisfactory’ for the job in hand! So, you all know I was feeling really down last week. Grumpy neighbours, miserable friends, unhappy workforce etc, but its all turned out reasonably well as you’ll see. Enjoy! First off, total proof that Span was right to get rid of the patio at the back of the studio. It was simply too high. Check the damp here: The manhole still has to come up 60mm to equal DPC Studio toilet waste at correct level, gas and electric still to come out Woke up Thursday morning (da-da-n’da-daaah!) and the Ducting Fairy had been in the night! (and the right thickness of Celotex had turned up!) I got this lot out on my own, so if I ever stop earning as a musician, I might be able to become a digger driver! Span and Pete show up at the crack of 11.30 (!) and start to whack out the studio oversite, bearing in mind we have an hour and a half before the machines have to be shut down Old gas supply has now gone and the main house DPC is in line with the shovel handle which will give you some idea of the topography of the property Oversite now down to five courses and the studio kitchen waste still to be concealed Then we put the sand in via wheelbarrows so as to not upset the neighbour :twisted: As you know by now, it’s then just a case of laying out the membrane. BTW, the spots on the picture are yet more bloody raindrops! Then Pete cracks on with the Celotex And this is where we ended up Saturday evening With just this little bit to do prior to Building Inspector’s visit yesterday morning You know me for my “arty shots” – so I thought I’d prove that Celotex is waterproof, cos it was bloody well raining….again :roll: And our house is a building site once more Time for me to make tidy for the Building Inspector Then I get to practice my digger skills again, tidying up the drive Trev and I crack on with finishing the oversite floor Reinstate kitchen waste to 5mm below DPC (I did this!) Then on to taping all the joints on the upstands to match the floor Job Done! X marks the spot, my friends, and to tell you the truth, whilst I was feeling down at the beginning of the week, I went back to my Sketchup file and checked the measurements of the exterior walls; north-to-south, east-to-west, then I checked the building that I now have and they were exactly the same. 8.12m x 4.77m. Yet, I still didn’t trust where the X had to go because that X will be coming straight up through my control room floor. I’ve checked it 8 times so far and it’s still coming up in the same place. Wish me luck. This is the control room cluster of ducting (which is only held together with gaffer tape for ease of placement etc). The five pipes that you see are as follows (clockwise from right-hand large pipe): audio tie lines to iso booth, speaker cable from control room to speakers left/centre/front, computer peripheral to Mac display monitors, audio tie lines control room to live room, speaker cable from control room to left surround/right surround All ducting in place Chill-out area framing shows up And starts to get fitted And really taking shape Introducing Steve and Phil, 2 cracking lads who are great at their job Presenting the ancient art of Step Flashing, something native to our shores, a dying trade and a total work of art. This all started as a roll of lead. And this is what it looks like when it’s fitted Meanwhile, here’s the end of my steel tape (sticking out of the narrow ducting) And here’s the other end Final shot for this post. Steel arrives tomorrow – concrete booked for Saturday. If any of you guys see any problems with any of this – PLEASE TELL ME (no, I’m not shouting!) Stay tuned Lou 8) PS The Building Inspector signed off the oversite with flying colours! :D :D :D

Aloha Lou, Hey! Glad to see that things are patched up with you and your mates. :D Great progress! I was starting to wonder what you were up to since it had been five whole days since your last post. :wink: Be safe, and keep up the great work! Aloha 8)

Thank you my friend - all back on track! Regards to Mrs Kendale of course! :) Aloha! Lou 8)

Lou, You were just about to tape up the ends of your ducts so "stuff" doesn't fall down them? Who am I to say? I'm learning so much from your build! My steel and conduits arrive tomorrow :) Geoff

hi looks great man. maybe if you feed string down the pipes so they are protuding a few inches at the end folded them down the out side and tape over, so after your pour you can just un tape and it gives you an easy way to feed (pull) your cables .

Hi Lou Its looking awesome! Thanks for the tips on building/planning control and took your advice :) As fyi, i double checked with planning and building control as per your recommendation. All drawings are now in and hoping to hear in the next week or so. Both Builder and Architect seem to think there wont be any issues but we'll see. Out of interest, it looks like (well at least from one of the pics) you are using Travis Perkins, wondered what brand was your ducting ? Also, Are you planning aircon/fresh air etc for your room. What have you decided on ? again for fyi, i've been in email to these guys http://www.global-cooling.co.uk/ and they seem quite helpful. At first i was looking at the Daikin Ururu Sarara which came up on one of the other threads but they say that its not available in the UK due to its high ambient temperature required for cooling mode. I'm hoping to have something very similar to "Scotts Studio" http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/Pages/Scott_1.htm (Thanks John and Scott for this link) and their suggestion is a Daikin ducted 6kW unit, with 2 x 100mm supply and 2 x 100mm return for each area, reduced down from the 2 x 200mm plenums. However if you prefer 200mm dia. ducting this is fine also. The Daikin ducted range of air conditioning is possibly the quietest available. An estimate for this price would be £ 4946-98 inc. vat @ 5% Rate. This would include a fresh air induction kit into the ducted internal fan coil unit from outside, and acoustic insulated techtherm ducting, along with necessary air control manual baffles. The Kit would be the Daikin FBQ60B + RXS60E with controller as BRC1D. Its well early for me to be thinking of detail design here seeing as i'm STILL draining trenches :oops: but of all the build topics, the air con has me most confused Anyway, this may or may not be any use but though i'd post the info anyway Can't wait for more photos...and hopefully in about 4 weeks or so i hope to start my own build thread! cheers John

Hi Guys – as always, hope you’re all doin’ Ok! Thanks for the comments Chaps – always nice to know that people are interested. 8) Geoff………………….Hey! Of course Dude, as you’ll see, but many thanks for the thought. :wink: Joey – Thanks for the tip Mate, but to be honest, as lots of people up here know it’ll be many many weeks, probably even months before I need to start pulling cables through my ducting. When I do need to do that, I’ll use a simple steel tape (as shown in my previous post) to push through each duct, then attach two draw chords and pull them back through so that they both overlap either end by 300mmm or so. I then intend to pull my cables one at a time from each end of the duct as follows: Attach the first cable to one of the draw cords and pull through, then, attach second cable together with the cord just pulled to the cord still in the duct and pull back from the other end. This ensures that there’s always one draw cord in the duct until you’re finished, and furthermore makes it much easier to pull since you’re not trying to pull 32 cables in one go! John – nice to hear from you Buddy, in fact we were up your neck of the woods last Sunday! I decided to take heed of some of Len Morgan’s great advice in his sticky by remembering that my loved ones will far outlive any studio I build, so we all went for a day out to here: Warwick Castle – a really great time! (Americans love English Castles!) :wink: Unfortunately, my miserable neighbour followed us! :shock: And, She had the last laugh! :cry: Seriously John to your points, I’m real glad you’ve decided to go down the legit route with an Architect and planning permission etc, I promise it will potentially save you no end of grief, could I also suggest that you get him to draw up your regulations drawings for building control as well? He’ll probably cut you some sort of deal if he’s doing these as well as your site plan, location plan, elevations and floor plans! Yes Mate you need plenty of drawings but it’s worth it. One word on building control in the U.K. Just keep playing dumb, keep telling them that you’re just trying to get everything right, that you’ve never done this before etc (basically make them feel like a superior band of civil servants) and they will be oh so, so helpful. Good luck – you’ll be fine. As for my supplier – yes, I do indeed use Travis Perkins for all my materials. I opened an account with them. I would suggest you open an account with whoever is nearest to you, Travis, Jewsons, Elliots, Builder Center etc. I say this because you’ll then know that when it comes to delivery times you’ll always be first or last drop of the morning or afternoon. I could walk to my local TP in 15 minutes! Very handy indeed. Re the ducting – as I said in my last post, a Mate literally dropped it free of charge on my driveway! I’ve checked for you, and there’s no brand name, but it is the same stuff as the cable TV guys use!! Air – Con? Well, like you, it confuses me somewhat but I am finding that Rod’s book is helping. I have decided that I will need two systems; one for my control room and a separate system feeding both my live room and iso booth. As for make and model, I haven’t got that far yet but am very seriously looking at 3 or 4 solar panels on the roof to provide the power for it. I’ll let you know more when I’ve done more research! OK, guys, here comes the update: Especially for Geoff Then, an unintended cock-up. Trev and I painstakingly cut Thermolite blocks to act as supports for the steels (the ‘chairs’ are £5.60 each), only to be told by good old Span that we can’t use them as they could well float in the concrete. :roll: Chillout glass starts to arrive – this is the solar control tinted stuff for the roof Phil and Steve crack on with the flashing And pause for the obligatory photo call The glass starts to go in Steve – the ‘Mission Impossible’ shot! Trev and I start assembling the steel – but this time supported with bricks Introducing Graham – a top bloke and an excellent spark – cutting in the armoured cable to run to the new isolating switch in the house Which will be here Why the hell didn’t I buy bolt-cutters? :roll: There! All nice and tidy! The last little bit Definitely the wrong shoe size for this job (UK12 – US 14 – Eur 47!) Tie-in to make safe for Pete and Span tomorrow I could almost do this for a living (Not!). Steel in top third of the concrete, bricks lying parallel to the concrete flow. :D Feeling a bit chuffed with myself, to be honest! :lol: :lol: All chill out area glass in and weatherproofed Armoured cable now running back from studio to isolating switch As shown All guttering now fitted including the downpipe to the soakaway we dug a couple of weeks ago And finally, my friends, the mandatory arty shot of the chill out area roof, which, if you don’t mind me sharing, I designed! And that’s it for now, guys. The concrete goes in tomorrow and I will finally have my isolated (hopefully well-engineered), ducted slab. Off out now with Sarah for a well-earned relaxing evening. Stay tuned Regards Lou 8)

lou, your threads been just great to keep up with. the glass roof is just awesome, beautiful work there. keep up the progress updates. (and yes, we americans do love castles) heres proof http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/getaways ... newssearch cheers kevin (ps... i'm not english by any stretch, however, since i work in a university, there are many brit and ozians prof here, and i've picked up "cheers" from them)

Lou, Been watching and applauding you the entire way. Your chill out room is absolutely gorgeous. How do you get so much work done and take so many picures along the way? :lol: Tom