Red Monster Studios - Design Phase

Introduction My name is Padraig Donnelly and for the past year and a half I’ve been planning for the opening of a new recording studio in the South Derry area of Northern Ireland sometime in 2009. We’re hoping to start construction at some point within the next six months and we’ve already come up with a few possibilities for the final layout. (Still to come in digital form, but they do exist on paper.) I’ve been lurking here for a while now and I’ve just recently plucked up the courage to take the plunge and tell you about our project, as well as pose some of our more worrying questions to the community. I’m still a little nervous about posting, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. :) I’ve also got some pictures of the existing structure. I’d like to point out that these are indeed hosted off-site and not uploaded to the forums, however I have a long standing business account with my hosting company and have no plans to close the account any time soon. In the event that for some reason the account does get closed (such as bankruptcy due to a failed studio venture) I’ll do my best to replace them all within the thread so that they are not lost. ;) Anyway. Here we go. I hope you like the space. Budget The absolute maximum: UK£30,000 (For those elsewhere in the world : US$60,000, €41,000, AUS$69,000.) Existing Structure The structure is farm building, constructed over fifteen years ago. It was constructed without planning permission and at the time, it was beyond the reach of Building Control. According to the Planning Authority we have to put in an application for ‘change of use’, but unless we make any alterations to the exterior of the structure we should not need a ‘full application’. Additional permits will be needed for the installation of a new septic tank. Although the building is plumbed for draining, no facilities currently exist. As a commercial space (and considering the average diet of our average client) we’ll need to make provisions for the extra waste. On the ground floor we have 190m2 of space to work with, as well as first floor decking that adds roughly another 50m2 of space. The floor is 18.72m by 10.2m of poured concrete without rebar. According to my dad (who built the shed), the concrete has an average depth of 6” and is poured on between 6” and 3 or 4ft of hardcore. (Update: Just after getting off the phone with my dad. He says that there might be a damp course after all... sadly he can't remember.) According to the engineers who laid it, it’s rated at 36N, but I have no idea what this means. :P As you can see from the pictures, the walls are concrete blocks (9” or 255mm thick) with no cavity insulation. They reach a height of 2.46m, with 600mm clearance between the tops of the walls and the joists for the first floor decking. I-bars are set into the wall at an equal spacing and serve to suppport the corregated iron and plastic roof construction. As far as I’m aware, it’s 1.8m from the bottom of the decking to where the roof starts to taper off into that dome. Height from bottom of decking to apex of the roof is (I think) 3.9m. The trusses have a span of around 10.5m. The decking is constructed from timber joists built into I-bars spanning between 4-5m from the central support. The edge of the decking comes to almost the exact center of the building. The central support is also aligned to the center of the decking. (Looking at the photograph, it’s approximately 5m to each wall and 5m to the start of the stairs from that central I-bar.) The decking is topped with a sheet of what looks like MDF or something similar. The interior roof above the decking has been sprayed with a waterproofing course to prevent drips from leaks and condensation. As already stated, the building is plumbed for water at one point near the door, although no facilities currently exist. It is powered from the domestic supply at the house, approximately 50m or more away, feeding into a circuit board near the door. Currently this serves a number of power sockets and the overhead strip lighting. Goals A large, spacious live room and control room, as well as two or three isolation booths. TL to the outside is not a problem as our nearest neighbours are half a mile away on the opposite side of the building from where we plan to bulid the live room. Our main goal is to achieve the best possible isolation between the control room and the live room and booths. We also want to install shower and toilet facilities for customers and perhaps have some kind of ‘green room’ or recreation area where they can just hang out. Restrictions The I-bars that support the first floor deck cannot be moved. They are load bearing and rated way above domestic requirements. Also, the location of the toilet facilities is limited to the point where the drainage pipe is laid. At the moment, we haven’t quite found it yet, but we know that it’s in the general area of the door. :P (Wish I could be more specific.) Questions 1. After looking at a number of the awesome build diaries on the site and after talking to an architect, it looks like we’re going to have to put a damp course and insulation down on the floor, followed by another pour of concrete, screed, etc. Is that correct? 2. Considering that the building has been standing for over fifteen years with absolutely no sign of any damp rising through the concrete, could we get away with putting the floor down directly on top of that without the damp course? 3. Is this something that has to be done to comply with Building Control, or is it just a preventative measure (in other words: ‘just in case’)? Misc One of the young, foolish minds behind this endeavour. ;) I’m working with a friend on making up a Sketchup representation of the existing structure, as well as the proposed studio design. Apologies for the lack of plans, dimensions, etc. I’ll add these in as soon as possible. For now, I’m mainly worried about the floor itself as I’m in the process of trying to figure out an average ballpark figure for costs. I'm really looking forward to hearing feedback from you guys and I really hope you can help. I've already learned so much here (and from Rod's book) that I think this is the best place for me right now. :D All the best, Padraig. [removed]

nice building! if the floor isn't damp then the usually flooring practices should work. you can leave a plastic sheet on the floor overnight and see if it collects moisture. other areas can be the culprit for moisture besides the ground. worst case, after you level it, put down a vapor barrier "just in case". compared to all the other things you'll likely need to do to get the rooms and isolation built the way you want it, it should be a small cost and effort.

Hello again everyone. Thank you for your reply, Glenn. I'm feeling a little more relaxed about the whole thing now. Things have at least progressed in the right direction since my initial post. Build-wise we are standing still, but at the time of writing this almost all of our electronics and actual studio gear are on the way to us. We plan on setting up temporary shop in the two living rooms in the house next to the proposed studio. (One is carpeted and chock full of soft furnishings, the other has a hard floor... We'll see how it pans out.) However, we did manage to get a friend of ours to knock up a Sketchup drawing of the building. The scale is 10 or maybe 100 times off... but everything is in the right place and proportionate. It's just the overall scaling that we couldn't figure out how to change. Hopefully this will help shed some light on the project. Things are going to be busy for a while as we already have three bands booked for the temporary space, but hopefully we'll be able to sit down with Sketchup and provide you with an idea of how we intend to divide up the space and hopefully get some feedback on that. In the meantime, if anyone wants to go ahead and fool around with a few potential layouts themselves, you're more than welcome. Any input would be greatly appreciated. :) Regards, Padraig.

Hey Padraig, That's a lot of available space you have there mate. Exciting times. Though a lot of space can be a blessing, it can also be a curse if you're not completely sure bout what it is you want/need. Keeping in mind that every square meter of construction will probably postpone your retirement by a month or two... Do you have an idea of how big every space should preferably be? I mean, how many people/instruments do you want to be able to host in each room? How much space do you need for your control room equipment? Once you know how many square feet every room should preferably be, combine these numbers with the room ratios you find on this forum and you'll have something to start with. I forgot where they are, but Eric Desart posted a graphical representation of improved Louden ratios here somewhere. Couldn't find the exact post though. I seem to have trouble finding things this week... :?

Hello Sigert, Exciting times indeed! We're looking forward to getting started, although as you can see we have no intention of rushing everything. At the minute, when asked, we're giving people a date of Winter 2009 for the grand opening. We're hoping that it'll be done and dusted before then, but we are willing and able to take as much time as it takes. As for room sizes, that i-bar where the stairs end roughly marks the center of the building. If you divide it into quarters from there, one quarter will be the main live room, one quarter will be the control room and possibly an iso booth. We'd like a largish control room purely for the comfort factor. Our actual recording equipment has been selected to be portable enough to take into live venues without cluttering up the FOH (too much)... so space for it wont be an issue. The rest of the space... we haven't decided yet. Where the floor space extends out from under the first floor decking, we have a headroom of about 35" (I think... off the top of my head) and we could look into having some kind of high ceilinged live room for orchestral instruments or anything else where having that kind of acoustic would be beneficial. Obviously something like that would have to be constructed at some time in the future, given how much something like that would cost, but it's nice to have the option. At the minute, we're expecting an average of five musicians plus two engineers in the facility at any given time. Ideally we'd like to have enough iso space and floor space in the main room to accommodate that many people. Incidentally, one of the projects we're taking on in our temporary space is going to be a ten piece Cuban act. How we're going to fit them all into the living room of my house is going to be interesting. :) After all of that, there's also room there for a spacious green room. Next do the door, we're going to have the toilet/shower facilities. This is where the building is plumbed for water so we don't really have much of a choice in this without coming into some tricky plumbing choices. As for placement of any external doors, the entire perimeter of the building is up for grabs. It can all be cleared of brush fairly easy (we have our own bulldozer ;)) to provide access. I've looked at the ratios and we have a couple of designs that get as close to them as is practically possible for us. I haven't seen the graphical representations yet, but I'll do a search and see if I can find them. Cheers for the reply. :) This is a very exciting project for us and we have a serious slack of similarly minded people around to share in said excitement. We generally get blank stares and polite nods when we start discussing room ratios and tangential modes at parties. ;) Regards, Padraig.

sounds cool! i'd keep the main facility on the bottom floor with the live room open all the way up. on the second floor put in either some additional booths, lounge, and/or post prod/video edit rooms to rent.

Hey Glenn, Thanks for a great reply! That's a pretty awesome design and it's an orientation I hadn't considered before. That would definitely allow us a hell of a lot more space than I had originally been planning. When you say to leave the live room open all the way up, do you mean building a high ceiling over it or just leaving it open to the rest of the structure? My worry with the latter is that because of the size of the space and with the metallic roof and walls, the natural reverb would be too much. Also, when you stand inside the place at the minute, wind, rain and hail are amplified like a drumstick hitting a drum. We need to isolate recording rooms from the actual structure as much as we need to isolate them from one another, unfortunately. Thanks again. All feedback is greatly appreciated. :) Regards, Padraig.

definitely as high as your budget allows but definitely a room-within-a-room to prevent the outside noises from intruding.

every square meter of construction will probably postpone your retirement by a month or two

Great, then make it big. . . really big! Who wants to ever retire. . . ;)

Howardk wrote:

every square meter of construction will probably postpone your retirement by a month or two

It could also mean you can charge more $$$ for such a great facility? Retire earlier? It all depends on how you look at it? Personally I hope to be playing my instrument till the day I die. Nice space. Any chance of moving the stairs?

Hi there, Yes, the stairs are movable. I should have pointed that out. :) Regards, Padraig.

I have been playing with design ideas for myself. . . I will not be building for a couple years. One model I am considering is a steel building, similar to yours and building another structure within it for sound isolation/proofing. I was thinking the drum/live room would have the an area with a tall open ceiling, like the design gullfo suggested. In your case I would consider locating a second control room, vocal both etc. on the top level with glass looking down on the live room and create a smaller control room and ISO booth on the main floor. I suggest this for a couple of reasons. The second floor for your larger control room should provide more ceiling height for which will be much better for a mixing room, (although I can not tell how much ceiling you have to work with), which would be better for 5.1 if that is an issue, and more space when there are a lot of people as part of the session will make it a better hangout. It might be better to have the offices, and smaller control/edit room, on the main floor so that they are closer to people dropping by/in/out and would not disturb a recording/mix session. The main floor smaller post/edit/overdub room could also be set it up with a view into the large drum room, and wired for recording track drums or guitar amps, when the large room was busy with a big mix session, etc. . . Of course really could acoustic isolation is key if you plan to do any room sharing. . . just some thoughts. . . . and just rough suggestions because the ceiling height is unknown. . Another suggestion, before you do too much detailed design, make a simple bubble diagram using flowcharting software such as Visio. Define each space you require as a named block, connect them with lines as they are to be utilized and arrange the spaces accordingly. This really helps plan out a good layout, and will save a whole bunch of time juggling things around, as compared to doing room planning in detailed drawing in a CAD system such as Sketchup, because it helps you works out the logistics and room/area interdependencies more efficiently. Don't forget to create placeholders for multiple storage areas, machine room, entrance way, offices, stairs, lounge, etc. . .

When you say to leave the live room open all the way up, do you mean building a high ceiling over it or just leaving it open to the rest of the structure? My worry with the latter is that because of the size of the space and with the metallic roof and walls, the natural reverb would be too much.

Yes, you will need additional walls and ceilings throughout the building to isolate from the sound of rain, improve acoustics, etc. . . In the case of the Live room, you will need to come up with some kind of truss for the ceiling. There are a bunch of different approaches that will work. It does not have to be a strong as a roof that is outdoors because it will not be exposed to wind/snow etc. . . You probably know someone with experience that can help with the design (architect/engineer).

Hi Howard, Thanks for the suggestions. Definitely food for thought. However, I should state that the floor for the upper deck is constructed of something like a high density chip board laid right onto those joists. Every time you walk up the stairs or across the deck, you can hear every footfall plain as day throughout the entire structure. This makes me want to avoid putting anything of any importance upstairs. Also the idea of having to run up and down stairs every time I wanted to change a microphone position... well... I guess I could use the exercise. ;) Mixing in 5.1 is not an issue for us and I can't see us doing any kind of room sharing. If we have a band in, the whole facility is dedicated to it. However, I like the idea of being able to stick another couple of smaller mixing rooms upstairs, but at the minute our budget precludes us from fitting out any more suites. RnG, the BBC and I/UTV pretty much have post-production sound sewn up in Northern Ireland and then the more established studios have snapped up whatever else is going in this line. It's definitely an area we'd like to expand into, but for now we're going to take it one thing at a time. I guess one thing that is quite important to me is being able to see all of the musicians at all times without having to resort to cameras and monitors. We have enough space that we can design a layout that provides us with a line-of-sight on each space/booth and that is something that I'd like to achieve. But, at the end of the day, if we have to sacrifice this for better acoustics, so be it. :) Thanks again for the interest. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated. :) Regards, Padraig.

When you mentioned 2 engineers in an earlier post, I assumed you would want to be able to do work in 2 different control/editing rooms. Be careful of dedicating the facility to one band. In experience schedules often end up overlapping outside of your control and there is a lot of benefit to be able to do 2 things at once, to meet deadlines and keep clients happy. . . so if you have the engineers/people a second control/editing room is a very good thing. Foot fall noise is a concern. I have dealt with it successfully in the past. In my case I put a layer of drywall on the existing floor, another layer of wood and finished with carpet. On the bottom side I filled the joist cavity with fiberglass insulation. From there I had an area with metal hat channel grid on springs in each individual room with insulation within the grid and 2 layers of 5/8" drywall attached to the grid. . . and another area where ceiling joists rested on the individual room walls, not mechanically connected to the second floor at all. Of course details will vary for more or less isolation. If you don't allow people to walk upstairs and have enough space on the main floor, you should be able to get away with less but still need isolation to keep adjacent room noise from coming in from the ceiling. I am less sensitive to the line of sight because I find, even in the best organized rooms, it can get tough for people to see each other due to lighting/glare/position/gear in the way, etc. I really like windows for how it makes a room feel and the distribution of light, but I plan to go with LCDs and cameras next time round, but it is an extra expense. . . if you can make it happen so everyone can see each other, great!

depending on concrete costs, you might get a quote on adding a concrete floor overhead (assuming the structure can handle it). this way you can make that space useful - lounge, couple of post-prod rooms, etc. otherwise as HowardK mentioned, beefing it up with proper joists and flooring (safety, noise) and adding carpet should work for making it accessible w/o foot falls but maybe not as useful.