studioporn

less-than-stellar morning today. on my way into work, i got pulled over by a cop because my vehicle registration is expired. i've been so busy getting moved in and working on the studio and all that this keeps completely slipping my mind. he was very nice and sympathetic to my cause though, especially since i have my drivers license as proof that i moved and my inspection is still valid, and doesn't follow the same schedule as my registration. he was like, "yeah, that's a pain in the ass to keep track of when they don't expire at the same time." so he had to write me up, but he told me to get my new registration today and plead not guilty; given my circumstances, he said the judge will almost certainly throw the ticket out.

but before that, i had an HVAC guy come over to look at the studio and see what we have to do for the ductwork. i explained that if possible, i'd like to avoid having to replace the furnace and condensing unit until next year, and just worry about the ductwork over the studio area. but after looking over the setup, it sounds like i'll have to do a more hard-core solution.

kevin's big concern, as is mine, is with mechanical noise and air noise passing into the studio, and studio noises passing through the rest of the house. his current thinking is that we might need to do sort of a 2-zone system so that the studio area ductwork is more isolated from the rest of the house. this may involve having to rip out and redo the main supply/return lines running down the middle of the basement.

one issue that needs to be resolved is that one of the supply lines dropping into the studio is right above the mix area. having any forced air around the mix position does weird things to the air in that space and can introduce phasing problems and mess up the stereo imaging and all. kevin's thought is to run a new line 2-3 joists back, and use the existing duct run to go straight into the storage room.

so all this ductwork was starting to add up, but i was like, "well, at least i might not have to replace the furnace right now." but i lose there too. our furnace has a flue vent and no fresh air intake, and this introduces a problem i hadn't even thought of until kevin brought it up: with the studio space being all sealed up, that's significantly less space from where oxygen can be pulled into the furnace area. this means that we could easily end up with negative air pressure around the furnace, and all the gasses being vented through the flue would get sucked back into the basement. which is bad.

i've also been really concerned about the humidity factor this time of year. humidity is much easier to control in the summer and winter, because evaporator coils are dehumidifiying by nature, and when heating stuff up in the winter, you're taking colder air, which can only hold so much moisture, and then heating it up to a higher temperature with the same absolute moisture content, but because the temperature is higher, the relative humidity is much lower.

during the spring and fall, things aren't running as much and as a result the humidity can really build up. the current plan is to put a new furnace in, with a fresh-air intake to maintain proper oxygen for the furnace and air pressure balance. said furnace would be quieter than our current one (bonus), would be variable-speed (bonus), more efficient (bonus), able to have a dehumidifier added on (bonus), and cost several thousand dollars (!bonus).

kevin's passing things off to his brother, who's the engineer at the company. he's going to go over stuff more closely and come back with final recommendations. but i suspect that unless he discovers some sort of loop hole, i'm looking at anywhere from $7k-9k to do the new furnace, ductwork, ductwork insulation, and all that other fun stuff. fortunately, i should be able to hold off on replacing the condensing unit until next summer, so that'll help save a few bucks this year.