Small studio/rehearsal space in RV Garage?

[SDB_Guitars]

My wife and I are buying a new house, and it has a 16' x 46' RV garage with a 16' ceiling. It has been sheetrocked/fire taped/insulated. I've drawn up a "room within a room" setup in Sketchup to try to utilize the space in a way that will work for both recording and rehearsal space. I drew this up assuming staggared 2x4 studs on 2x6 plates and dual layers of 5/8" sheetrock.The drawing has 13' ceilings, but my plan was to do an angled ceiling in each room with diffusion. I also drew in some bass traps, which I intended to cover in fabric and fill with Rockwool. There should be enough space above the rooms to handle serpentine sound dampened ducting of some fashion for fresh air circulation. Here's what I have so far (attached). I'm very new to this. I've done a lot of reading online, and have read Gervais' "Home Recording Studio..." book, but I feel like I could use the input of people who have more experience at this than I do.

[Gregwor]

Welcome to the forum!

Here are a few things:
- do you need the space at the front door for storage/parking?
- I'd utilize all the space if possible.
- Can you put a man door anywhere for another entry/exit to the building?
- I'd rotate the control room so that it was 16' wide and nice and long. Note: your width and height are the same. However, you can use that extra height to run HVAC duct work, so you could lose some height and not have a similar dimension problem. Basically, how you have your live room, I'd have the control room.
- You didn't draw what is around the building... is it attached to another building or is this a stand alone detached garage?
- Isolation: your current design won't work well. First off, the way the building sits as is, you have a 2 leaf system with each leaf flanking through the outer wall's studs. Adding another room in the existing building will create a 3rd leaf. 3 leafs = bad. What you will have to do is remove the existing sheetrock. If you need the isolation that I believe you do (full band rehearsals, recording drums, you've drawn a room in a room which means you're shooting for good isolation), you'll then have to add mass to the outside wall (I'm assuming it's standard 3/8" OSB sheathing like standard garages in North America??). That means cutting strips of 3/4" OSB, sealing and green gluing or construction gluing them to the existing wood from the inside, between the wall studs. This is a lot of work, but necessary to achieve decent isolation. This is still only going to give you an 1 1/8" of OSB which isn't amazing, but decent. From there, you will need to build separate rooms within your room. That means your live/jamming room will be it's own entity. Then, the control room will be it's own entity as well. That also leaves your big garage door you'll need to seal up. A quick search on the forum here will reveal how to deal with that. If you need guidance on that, I can provide you with some pics and details.
- Assuming this garage doesn't have any HVAC situation, you may have to dedicate a room in which you could have a furnace and whatever else you deem within the realm of your project for air handling.
- Regarding layout, consider some things like: exit routes, sight lines, gear loading (right now, you'll have to have your band load all their gear through your control room.. that isn't cool), ways for musicians to get around the place -- what happens if one of the band members have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a drum take? Will they have to quietly go through the live room? That wouldn't be good.
- Are you planning to have a half bath or little kitchen area? A machine room? A storage room?
- You don't need angled ceilings. You have great ceiling height as it is. The only time you need an angled ceiling is in situations like mine where the only way for me to get height is with one!
- Regarding acoustic treatment, yes you can design that before you build, but step one is getting a layout that works for your space and needs. Control room designing is the hardest as there are guidelines we all achieve to follow (ITU-R BS.1116-3 and the EBU Tech 3276). Live rooms, however, can be whatever you want them to be. Note: Diffusion only works in large rooms (like the live room you have the potential to have!), not small or even medium sized control rooms.
- For your HVAC duct work, there are lots and lots of threads on the forum covering it. Basically, you'll need silencer boxes (home made) on your outer AND inner leaf for both the supply and return of each room. That's the key. For any actual duct runs, you just need round or rectangular duct that has duct liner inside of it. We can get there in your design. You can get there by reading a ton more on the forum. But it's great that you realize it's importance at this stage!

You have a KILLER space to work in. So much potential. Your plan just isn't quite there in my opinion. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what I just wrote and I hope it forces you to do a new layout that will really utilize the space. You're blessed with a great space that could host a world class studio.

Greg

[SDB_Guitars]

Greg -

Thank you for weighing in, I definitely appreciate it! I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability:

- do you need the space at the front door for storage/parking?
- I'd utilize all the space if possible.

Yes, I will need the space either for parking one of my cars or for the small guitar workshop area where I build instruments. It's not feasible to have the entire space utilized for the studio, the largest footprint I can come up with is 16' wide by ~30' long. I need the live room more than the separate control room as I will be rehearsing there with my band.

- Can you put a man door anywhere for another entry/exit to the building?

There is a man door at the far end of the live room, just not modeled in Sketchup. It exits into my back yard near to my back porch. I was planning to build a double-door system there to allow quick exit form the rehearsal space and back into the house through the rear entry.

- I'd rotate the control room so that it was 16' wide and nice and long. Note: your width and height are the same. However, you can use that extra height to run HVAC duct work, so you could lose some height and not have a similar dimension problem. Basically, how you have your live room, I'd have the control room.

I don't know how that will work since I need to retain the 16' x 16' space at the front of the garage and also need to retain the live room large enough to encompass a 4 piece band. That seems to leave me with either just a rehearsal space (no control room) or attempting a live end/dead end sort of thing.

- You didn't draw what is around the building... is it attached to another building or is this a stand alone detached garage?

This RV garage attaches to the side of my house and has a 10' wide opening around 6' into the garage, which takes it back to the limit of the front 16' I had reserved. Adjacent to my RV garage (spaced about 10' apart), my future neighbor has an identically sized RV garage attached to *his* house.

- Isolation: your current design won't work well. First off, the way the building sits as is, you have a 2 leaf system with each leaf flanking through the outer wall's studs. Adding another room in the existing building will create a 3rd leaf. 3 leafs = bad. What you will have to do is remove the existing sheetrock. If you need the isolation that I believe you do (full band rehearsals, recording drums, you've drawn a room in a room which means you're shooting for good isolation), you'll then have to add mass to the outside wall (I'm assuming it's standard 3/8" OSB sheathing like standard garages in North America??). That means cutting strips of 3/4" OSB, sealing and green gluing or construction gluing them to the existing wood from the inside, between the wall studs. This is a lot of work, but necessary to achieve decent isolation. This is still only going to give you an 1 1/8" of OSB which isn't amazing, but decent. From there, you will need to build separate rooms within your room. That means your live/jamming room will be it's own entity. Then, the control room will be it's own entity as well. That also leaves your big garage door you'll need to seal up. A quick search on the forum here will reveal how to deal with that. If you need guidance on that, I can provide you with some pics and details.

I will have to dig into this. The garage is sheetrocked, insulated (R39 not sound damping insulation obviously) and fire taped. I can remove the sheetrock if need be. The plan was to have the inner room free standing and not coupled to the existing walls or ceiling of the garage, and to do staggered 2x4 studs 24" OC in two layers on 2x6 plates to try to decouple the inner and outer sheetrock layers. I hadn't accounted for the existing sheetrock to be a 3rd leaf. Hrm. Any pics would definitely be appreciated.

- Assuming this garage doesn't have any HVAC situation, you may have to dedicate a room in which you could have a furnace and whatever else you deem within the realm of your project for air handling.

I had planned to duct heat/AC into a space above the room and vent it down through a serpentine dampened structure with active air removal at the bottom, also with serpentine ducts.

- Regarding layout, consider some things like: exit routes, sight lines, gear loading (right now, you'll have to have your band load all their gear through your control room.. that isn't cool), ways for musicians to get around the place -- what happens if one of the band members have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a drum take? Will they have to quietly go through the live room? That wouldn't be good.
- Are you planning to have a half bath or little kitchen area? A machine room? A storage room?

The previously mentioned man door at the back would suffice for restroom and food breaks. That could pose an issue, but I had also planned on having double heavy glass sliding doors on the control room to allow entry into the garage area. the plan was to have a pair of these sliding doors on each side of the control room to allow passing through from the car garage/shop area to the control room and then the live room. I didn't figure it would be as much of an issue for loading in and out since these doors open several feet and I do not plan to have a fixed desk in the control room for mixing, my plan was to have a nice chair I could place in the optimal listening position and do the bulk of my mixing from my iPad (I have a digital board and DAW interface). All computers/mechanicals would be outside of the studio structure as currently laid out.

- You don't need angled ceilings. You have great ceiling height as it is. The only time you need an angled ceiling is in situations like mine where the only way for me to get height is with one!

I just assumed angled ceilings so they'd allow more space for ducting, etc. above, but I'm happy to do flat ceilings. Easier to build.

- Regarding acoustic treatment, yes you can design that before you build, but step one is getting a layout that works for your space and needs. Control room designing is the hardest as there are guidelines we all achieve to follow (ITU-R BS.1116-3 and the EBU Tech 3276). Live rooms, however, can be whatever you want them to be. Note: Diffusion only works in large rooms (like the live room you have the potential to have!), not small or even medium sized control rooms.

That's good to know.

- For your HVAC duct work, there are lots and lots of threads on the forum covering it. Basically, you'll need silencer boxes (home made) on your outer AND inner leaf for both the supply and return of each room. That's the key. For any actual duct runs, you just need round or rectangular duct that has duct liner inside of it. We can get there in your design. You can get there by reading a ton more on the forum. But it's great that you realize it's importance at this stage!

I'm digging into that now as well.

You have a KILLER space to work in. So much potential. Your plan just isn't quite there in my opinion. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what I just wrote and I hope it forces you to do a new layout that will really utilize the space. You're blessed with a great space that could host a world class studio.

Greg

Thank you, sir! I hope to make the most of it based on the limitations under which I am sort of constrained.

[SDB_Guitars]

So, I didn't have a way to edit Sketchup files on my iPad, and found a lot of this to be easier with a tablet/stylus than a keyboard/mouse, so I switched to AutoCAD.

I borrowed some design ideas from one of John Sayers' example studio layouts ("Garage 2") which I modified to work in my 15' x 45' RV garage (inside measurement). I recognize that I will probably have to strip the sheetrock off the inside of the RV garage to avoid a 3rd leaf scenario, and I'm not sure how well that will go, but attached is the updated layout I am thinking about. It enlarges the listening/control room swaps the location of the control room and live room, allows direct egress from each without having to pass from one to the other, and allows band load-in directly from the outside without having to pass through the control room.

Please, anyone, everyone, let me know what you think, how well this design might work, etc.

Thanks,

Shawn.

[Soundman2020]

I didn't have a way to edit Sketchup files on my iPad

Try "SkethUp Free". It's a web browser based thing. Not very useful, and greatly despised by long-time SketchUp users, but it might be useful for you.

so I switched to AutoCAD.

Pity. Folks here on the forum won't be able to help you much with your design, since pretty much all of us use SketchUp.

I recognize that I will probably have to strip the sheetrock off the inside of the RV garage to avoid a 3rd leaf scenario,

Right! And likely also beef up the outer-leaf of the garage, using the "in between the studs" technique.

attached is the updated layout I am thinking about

Why are you angling the sliding glass doors? There's no need for that. It's a waste of space, and you are already very tight on space.

It enlarges the listening/control room swaps the location of the control room and live room, allows direct egress from each without having to pass from one to the other, and allows band load-in directly from the outside without having to pass through the control room.

It sounds like you are thinking things through carefully. All good!

But it's hard to see what you are actually planning there from a simple line drawing: I really can't make out what is what. I'm not sure if you are doing the walls right, since I can't even figure out which lines are inner walls, which ones are outer walls and which ones are just dimensions! I'd really suggest importing that back into SketchUp, and only using that from now on.


- Stuart -

[SDB_Guitars]

Stuart - thanks for taking the time to look this over. I know it's harder to see as it's not in your expected file format.

Try "SkethUp Free". It's a web browser based thing. Not very useful, and greatly despised by long-time SketchUp users, but it might be useful for you.

The change to AutoCAD was made mostly because I can't use Sketchup from my iPad (not even the free browser based version), and most of the time that is all I have access to. I can only use my PC while at work, and if I spend all day drawing my plans up at work, I'll likely get in trouble

Pity. Folks here on the forum won't be able to help you much with your design, since pretty much all of us use SketchUp.

I realize that, and I may see if I can import the DXF into Sketchup Free and pull that up unti a 3D model.

Right! And likely also beef up the outer-leaf of the garage, using the "in between the studs" technique.

Why are you angling the sliding glass doors? There's no need for that. It's a waste of space, and you are already very tight on space.

I angled them specifically because, in his online studio flood plan examples, John always seemed to do so. This is basically what i modified/redrew for my garage studio space:



If that's not necessary, that's an easy change.

But it's hard to see what you are actually planning there from a simple line drawing: I really can't make out what is what. I'm not sure if you are doing the walls right, since I can't even figure out which lines are inner walls, which ones are outer walls and which ones are just dimensions! I'd really suggest importing that back into SketchUp, and only using that from now on.

I will see if I can't import the DXF into Sketchup Free.

Structurally speaking, the outer two sets of lines are the pre-constructed garage walls (2x6 construction, insulated with R21 fiberglass then sheetrocked/fire taped per local building code) There is a air gap of 3" all the way around the inner construction, and all inner walls are drawn as 2x6 plates with 2 staggered sets of 2x4 studs 24" OC at each edge to provide isolation between the two layers of sheetrock attached to each side of those walls. The garage has a 16' ceiling, and I was planning to build the studio space with between 10' and 12' ceilings, and use the remaining space above for fresh air ducting/HVAC.

Thanks,

Shawn.

[SDB_Guitars]

Update: Looks like DXF files can only be imported into Sketchup Pro. May have to look at a different method.

[Soundman2020]

I angled them specifically because, in his online studio flood plan examples, John always seemed to do so. This is basically what i modified/redrew for my garage studio space:

OK, but that design is from a long time ago. John no longer does that. See here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 15&start=4

The garage has a 16' ceiling,

Nice! REALLY Nice! Having that much ceiling height bodes very well for good acoustics. You probably won't need that much in the CR, but for the LR, use all that you can.

and use the remaining space above for fresh air ducting/HVAC.

Smart move. That's what I normally do. But you won't need 4 feet for that: maybe 2', or a little more.

- Stuart -

[Gregwor]

Great work so far! I'm really glad to see you're considering everything I mentioned!

So, like Stuart said, the CAD drawing is really hard to understand. However, I THINK I see you have your control room facing the right side of the picture. That means you have your sliding doors on your rear wall? Maybe this is wrong. Maybe those two chair looking objects are actually speakers? And maybe the couch is actually a desk? Either way, having entry doors in corners is a bad idea (if you can avoid it) because it will impede on your ability to put super chunks or hangers there where you have the best ability to deal with ugly bass information. The same can be said about your live room entry door.
The other thing I noticed was your live room length is 17'. Your ceiling is 16'. That's getting close to being within 5% of one another. Maybe lengthen your live room a bit more if you feel you can give up some of that load in/storage area. Remember, bigger is pretty much always better.
Also, food for thought:
What if you slid both rooms to the far left and had the storage room on the far right. You could still use it as a sound lock/passage but also build a mechanical room in there. That could hold your furnace/air conditioner/HRV, etc. Then, you could plumb it through the ceiling to provide your air for both CR and live room! Since the ceiling in your CR will (like Stuart said) be a bit lower, it will have room for all of the duct work and silencers for both rooms. That would then allow you to maximize all 16' of height in your live room (jealous about that height by the way).
That sucks about your computer situation. Maybe spend like $300 and by a crappy laptop for home usage so you can SketchUp at home.
Greg

[SDB_Guitars]

Great work so far! I'm really glad to see you're considering everything I mentioned!

Thanks, Greg! I'm trying... I have construction experience but nothing specific to this level of isolation. It's definitely been a learning experience.

So, like Stuart said, the CAD drawing is really hard to understand. However, I THINK I see you have your control room facing the right side of the picture. That means you have your sliding doors on your rear wall? Maybe this is wrong. Maybe those two chair looking objects are actually speakers? And maybe the couch is actually a desk? Either way, having entry doors in corners is a bad idea (if you can avoid it) because it will impede on your ability to put super chunks or hangers there where you have the best ability to deal with ugly bass information. The same can be said about your live room entry door.

Yeah, I threw the couch and chairs in there for scale so I could judge the size, they would go at the opposite end. I've redrawn the room using just the glass sliding doors to enter/exit the live room. I plan to put a door on the flat side of the control room at the bottom right side of the control room in the attached updated design. The opening at the bottom left opens directly into my 2-car garage. All of this is attached to my house along the bottom wall.

The other thing I noticed was your live room length is 17'. Your ceiling is 16'. That's getting close to being within 5% of one another. Maybe lengthen your live room a bit more if you feel you can give up some of that load in/storage area. Remember, bigger is pretty much always better.

The planned ceiling height is 12', though I could step the live room ceiling up but I don't want to create any weirdness... my room dimensions other than height are 17.25 x 13.5... both the live and control rooms are the same base footprint. I have added wedges to the control room to *mostly* avoid parallel reflecting surfaces.

Also, food for thought:
What if you slid both rooms to the far left and had the storage room on the far right. You could still use it as a sound lock/passage but also build a mechanical room in there. That could hold your furnace/air conditioner/HRV, etc. Then, you could plumb it through the ceiling to provide your air for both CR and live room! Since the ceiling in your CR will (like Stuart said) be a bit lower, it will have room for all of the duct work and silencers for both rooms. That would then allow you to maximize all 16' of height in your live room (jealous about that height by the way).

I'm planning to tap into the house HVAC for heating/cooling with a serpentine dampened path. I *really* need the space at the front end of the garage, I can't dedicate 100% of the space to the studio. After I build the hell out of the ceiling I should still have 2' - 3' of space above the studio for the ducting, etc.

[Gregwor]

Are you able to have a man door at the far right hand side of the picture? I really think you should try to maintain all/as much height as possible in your live room and run all of your duct work and silencers over the control room. So, maybe a solution would be to flip the control room and live room, have an entry into the live room at the right of the picture. Then, in your storage area you could have your air handling unit. So, basically a mirror image of what I described before.

It seems as though you're arbitrarily throwing up angled acoustic treatment walls in your control room. Do you want a super awesome control room? If so, you probably want to build an RFZ style room. And with that, comes some design specifications to follow. We can help you with that, but the first step is laying out your rooms and ventilation (size, location, and where doors are).... sadly, I don't think we're done that stage yet.

Let me know what you think about flipping the rooms and having an entry door into the live room from the right side of the picture (preferably not in a corner)

Greg

[SDB_Guitars]

Are you able to have a man door at the far right hand side of the picture? I really think you should try to maintain all/as much height as possible in your live room and run all of your duct work and silencers over the control room. So, maybe a solution would be to flip the control room and live room, have an entry into the live room at the right of the picture. Then, in your storage area you could have your air handling unit. So, basically a mirror image of what I described before.

Greg - Thank you for taking a look at these things. I had absolutely planned to run the duct work and silencers above the control room. I am hoping I won't need much of a separate air handler as I'm planning to tap into my houses HVAC to provide fresh air. More on that in a minute.

There is actually going to be a 32" man door at the far right around 2/3 of the way down from the top right corner. My plan had been to hinge the angled acoustic baffle at the far right/bottom to allow access out through the man door if needed. The place where I would need to tap into my house HVAC calls above where the control room currently sits, which is one reason the control room is now on the right.

The other reason for the current control room vs live room orientation is that, in previous comments on the thread, it was suggested that the live room be on the bay door side, so that loading/unloading of amps, etc, not have to pass through the control room to get to the live room.

Regarding height, I was concerned with having the full height of ~15' for the live room, simply because the room is 13.5' wide and 17.25' long. I don't know what weirdness would happen having it taller than it is wide. Of course, that is a subject about which you know way more than I, and if it sounds good and is feasible, I'm all for it.

It seems as though you're arbitrarily throwing up angled acoustic treatment walls in your control room. Do you want a super awesome control room? If so, you probably want to build an RFZ style room. And with that, comes some design specifications to follow. We can help you with that, but the first step is laying out your rooms and ventilation (size, location, and where doors are).... sadly, I don't think we're done that stage yet.

The angles I used were borrowed from the (fairly old) "Garage 2" studio layout John S has posted on his website:



I had planned to build them very much like the old plan indicated, as slot resonators, but these are not a fixed item, buy any means. I'm wide open to suggestions on this as I have no real world experience with it. The angle and construction can be changed/finalized as needed. Obviously room placement, HVAC, etc. have to be determined first, anyway. It appears so far that I will have easy access to tap into the HVAC above the second floor near the back of my house and pipe a zone into the top of the RV garage. The house will be setup for multi-zone heating and cooling, so I figured I'd just add this as a zone and keep a wifi-connected thermostat in the control room.

Let me know what you think about flipping the rooms and having an entry door into the live room from the right side of the picture (preferably not in a corner)

I can swap the room layout back to how I had it, but because of the limitation to the access to the man door (which opens to my fenced back yard) any large equipment would need to pass through the bay door at the front, through the reloaced control room, and into the live room. I feel like the placement of two glass sliding doors on in the control room to facilitate this access would have a profound negative effect on the reflections there. I have no easy walkup access from the street to my back yard (just a narrow grassy walk down the side of the garage to a narrow gate).

Unfortunately, I have no control over the placement of the man door, the spacing from my RV garage to the adjacent property line (5 feet), the proximity of my RV garage to my neighbor's mirroring RV garage (10 feet total gap), etc. The builder in this subdivision has been very clear that no modifications can be made to the placement of any of these things, and no structural, electrical or HVAC changes can be made during the building process. They actually had us sign a *56 page contract* before starting work (8x longer than *any* other builder in the area, we have come to discover) that basically locks everything down on day 1 and allows no real changes until we take possession of the house. Which is why I will have to pull off hundreds of square feet of sheetrock in the RV garage instead of just asking them to not install it.

[Gregwor]

Regarding height, I was concerned with having the full height of ~15' for the live room, simply because the room is 13.5' wide and 17.25' long. I don't know what weirdness would happen having it taller than it is wide. Of course, that is a subject about which you know way more than I, and if it sounds good and is feasible, I'm all for it.

Simply put, area is area. Tall and narrow or short and wide, it still adds up to area and more area = better. As long as you don't have any dimensions the same or within 5% of one another, you're good to go. So yes, keep it as tall as you can.

The angles I used were borrowed from the (fairly old) "Garage 2" studio layout John S has posted on his website:

This isn't an RFZ design. You can totally do it like you have it, but you will have to deal with all sorts of issues that come with having your speakers inside your room. RFZ design removes the speakers from inside the room and basically eliminates all of those issues.

It appears so far that I will have easy access to tap into the HVAC above the second floor near the back of my house and pipe a zone into the top of the RV garage. The house will be setup for multi-zone heating and cooling, so I figured I'd just add this as a zone and keep a wifi-connected thermostat in the control room.

Unless rules are different where you live, I've always been under the impression that garages cannot share the same ventilation system as your home. That's why I keep suggesting running it's own system in the storage space. A lot of people run mini split systems but due to them being electric and not gas, they are way more expensive to run. Plus, they don't provide fresh air like a forced air system.

The builder in this subdivision has been very clear that no modifications can be made to the placement of any of these things, and no structural, electrical or HVAC changes can be made during the building process. They actually had us sign a *56 page contract* before starting work (8x longer than *any* other builder in the area, we have come to discover) that basically locks everything down on day 1 and allows no real changes until we take possession of the house. Which is why I will have to pull off hundreds of square feet of sheetrock in the RV garage instead of just asking them to not install it.

I'm dealing with my crappy builder and architectural requirements on my place too. At least you were able to get and afford a big awesome RV garage!

Greg

[Soundman2020]

Unless rules are different where you live, I've always been under the impression that garages cannot share the same ventilation system as your home.

Also, even if it is allowed, that's a very large extra volume that the house system was probably NOT designed to handle. Don't ever overload your house HVAC system by trying to extend it to cover areas it was never meant for. You'll end up with lousy HVAC in both the house and the studio.... The difference in cost for adding a proper HVAC system vs. trying to adapt one that wasn't meant for the purpose, is probably negligible, when compared to the total cost of building the studio.


- Stuart -

[SDB_Guitars]

Alright, I have updated the live room and control room ceiling heights (live - 15', control 10') and have changed the geometry of the control room. I have also added some gear for visual scale including my needed small workshop area. My plan is to put air handling/climage control equipment above the control room, as I will have just over 5' of space to work with up there, depending on the thickness of sound damping insulation I need up there. Thoughts?