John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

This is a great site, glad I found it now, wish I had found it sooner.

On an extremely low budget, I am building a very small music production room in my 2 car garage in Los Angeles. 100sqft...yikes, I know!

The garage had already been drywalled with fiberglass batting installed so I am framing two walls, non-parallel, in a corner to create my room within. The rafters have 3/4"ply up there for storage so uderneath I will place rigid fiberglass and drywall to create the "studio" ceiling.

LA gets hot in Summer especially in the valley. Once I have insulated the new room with all the rigid fiberglass it may keep a bit cooler but I am not sure about that. So my long winded question is, is it feasible to use a window type A/C unit on one of the walls I will build, that exhausts into the rest of the garage proper?
There is a side entry door nearby that could be open when it is running and I could construct absorbtive covers for it for when it is not in use. I don't intend to work at high sp levels.

I really cannot afford the price and install of a proper wall unit to an exterior wall by a contactor, the added electrical work etc.


Has anyone had any luck with this? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks, Lister.

ILister,

I had a band I played with for years - the bandleader held practice at a small studio he built in his basement, and he used a through the wall unit inside of the basement rather than directly to the outside world with great success.

So the answer is yes this will work.

Rod

Thanks Rod, this gives me hope and the ability to plan my spending. Appreciate your time.

Lister.

If your room is that small, it is all fiberglassed and insulated in, and it's in your garage, why not build a silent box in the attic, route a duct from the house system through it, and you have AC, heat, and air with very little cost at all. plus a room that small will not hurt your overall system performance enough to notice a diference at all. if you build a U shape box making the air/sound turn a few corners you should be able to stop sound from coming in or out plus it will drop the airflow enough to be quiet. Just my 2 cents

jai

Jai wrote:If your room is that small, it is all fiberglassed and insulated in, and it's in your garage, why not build a silent box in the attic, route a duct from the house system through it, and you have AC, heat, and air with very little cost at all. plus a room that small will not hurt your overall system performance enough to notice a diference at all. if you build a U shape box making the air/sound turn a few corners you should be able to stop sound from coming in or out plus it will drop the airflow enough to be quiet. Just my 2 cents

jai

I was planning on doing something like this with my room. Don't these window units have a return duct or am I wrong?

The return duct is part of the unit - you have a choice of fresh or recirculated air, then all necessary paths for air are part of the unit and are located either on the front (inside) or rear (outside) - this works fine for the air movement part, but SUCKS for quiet. That's why I drew up that "chiller room" approach that's now part of the "sticky" section -

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=644

This lets you build for sound isolation, then make custom baffled ducting to move air and maintain isolation... Steve