John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I am considering this "risky" proposition as there is no other choice as apparently the city will not permit any garage conversions. I'm very interested in hearing from anyone who did this about potential pitfalls!!

How can we be sure you're not an inspector trying to catch offenders for your quota ?

I would imagine that "potential pitfalls" include things like being forced to tear it all down again, legal liability in the event of any accidents, insurance premiums not covering your entire house if anything were to go wrong, and other things like that. EG, if a fire started in your illegal conversion, you would most likely be personally responsible for every consequence, both civil and criminal, including third party liability, and your insurance company would most likely refuse (justifiably) to pay out anything at all for damages. You'd be on your own, entirely.

To be honest, I would not even consider building a studio without the necessary paperwork in place. And I also doubt that anyone here would be interested in helping you with a potentially illegal activity.

I may be wrong on all the above, as I'm not a lawyer, but I keep reading horror stories in the press about people ending up in very deep trouble for doing much less serious things than what you propose. Just yesterday there were headline about a guy being jailed for holding a Bible study in his house (!). The city claimed his house was not zoned as a "church", and therefore it was illegal to hold church services there. Nothing happened at all, nobody complained about anything, and nobody got injured, but he went to jail all the same...

Caveat emptor...


- Stuart -