studioporn

sorry i've been out of touch lately. been too busy hauling ass to get out the new www.cmu.edu site and deal with all the aftermath. you should check it out if you haven't already.

the electrical inspector came out today to look at stuff. there were a few things about the electricians' work that i was wondering whether he might have a problem with. well, he did. and found a few other things i hadn't thought about. the ones i thought might be problematic were a few poorly-supported wire runs. he also found some wire stapling he didn't like, and we have one major bundle of wire running along the back wall of the house into the circuit panel. he wants to see that split up into two smaller bundles because of overheating concerns. he also took minor issue with the 2 no-longer-used feeds that the electricians forgot to terminate for me, but i assured him i was already on top of that and would have them fix those next time they're back.

i'm kind of bummed, because usually these guys do better work than this. i don't know if they were just in a hurry, or not as attentive as usual because i wasn't around, or what. i also noticed when looking more closely that they installed more separate circuits across the three rooms than i thought they would. they did something like 5 or 6 when i thought they were going to do just 3. oh well, at least i won't have to worry about tripping breakers.

called the head electrician back to see about getting these things fixed.

in other news, ductwork is nearly done, still waiting for the dehumidifier to come in. most of the duct runs are pretty quiet, but i really need to figure out something to do with the one above the mix area. it's pretty high velocity and noisy. i'm hoping the new furnace will take care of at least some of the mechanical noise. not entirely sure yet about the air noise. currently they're tapping into the trunk with a 7" round; i may have to get them to switch that to a 6" for the first few feet out of the trunk and then up to a 7".

Posted by Len at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

found out the other night that the electricians in fact did NOT take out an electrical permit. would've been nice if they had asked me back in september whether i needed a permit, but in the end, all permits are my responsibility (i am technically the contractor, after all) and they certainly didn't do anything wrong. i've just learned the hard way that i need to be more proactive about such things in future projects.

so anyway, the permit's being taken care of now. if i understood jerry correctly, he did the permit paperwork in person, which should help shave at least a couple of days off the processing time. jerry says it'll probably be 5-6 days before it's processed and the dude can come inspect. the lady at the permit office says at least 10 days. the dude doing the actual inspecting says 2-3 weeks. i have no idea which one is closest to the truth, so i'll start pinging them around middle of next week to see where things are.

Posted by Len at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ductwork wasn't completed today, but it's damn close. it would've been done today were it not for the fact that one of the guys got stung by a yellow jacket or 5 (long story), is allergic to bee stings, didn't have his medicine on him, and ended up having to go to the hospital (he's ok now). that left just one guy to do stuff, and much of the remaining work is 2-man material.

kevin and i spent a bunch of time talking about my concerns that several of the supply runs didn't have enough turns in them to adequatley attenuate any air noise which might be inclined to pass into the duct. each duct run is supposed to have at least 180 degrees' worth of turns in order to deal with sound waves most effectively. this isn't all that hard to accomplish in the main studio, where i tried to leave room behind the walls for exactly this purpose. however, for the iso booths things are more of a pain to deal with, there isn't as much space, and the situation with the joists above that area is....well, there's a helluva lot of joists there.

we started toying around ideas for the storage/iso room first, since that looked like it might be easier. after a bunch of experimentation with all sorts of different elbows, flex duct, and oval duct, kevin finally got the idea to bring the supply down from the ceiling with flex duct, run it inside the bulkhead and up into the next ceiling bay, then over the steel beam, past the rest of the bulkhead, and finally dropping down into the room. here's a picture from the ground looking up to better explain:

i'm insanely happy we got this to work. i was beginning to worry that i'd have to settle for some less-than-ideal compromise. which would still be way better than any regular ol' ductwork installation, but i'm really trying to make this the best i can before closing up the walls.

the supply coming into the vox booth is going to get a similar treatment, but that's going to require expanding the bulkhead a bit to give adequate room to the flex duct. they're gonna pick up with that tomorrow.

here's a shot of the storage/iso room return coming in from behind the front wall of the main room and then dropping down between the main and storage rooms:

here's an interesting picture of where the supply that runs to the mixing area comes out of the furnace. it's the insulated duct line. basically it comes out of the furnace and makes a complete U-turn up and back over the furnace and into the studio. that particular supply register is going to come out in the middle of the ceiling, so that was the only place we could get a series of good bends in.

Posted by Len at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ductwork is coming along nicely, although it's proven to be a bit trickier than originally planned and won't be done until tomorrow. i snapped a few photos of the work thusfar, but it's hard to get intelligible pictures, what with the maze of wall frames and all. this is the best one i got -- the return for the vox booth:

they're using oval-shaped ductwork for this run, which does an awesome job of squeezing in between the frames. it comes down from the ceiling on the right, makes a 90 degree turn to the left, followed by another 90 degree turn down, and then mates up with the register. these turns will help reduce mechanical and air noise. additionally, they sized the ducts as big as they could for these rooms, which will help further reduce air velocity, and by extension, air noise.

i'm glad that all of the elbows are curved rather than square. this should help reduce air turbulence around those corners.

Posted by Len at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ductwork is being installed as i speak. woohoo!

hizzy depot came yesterday and picked up all the excess insulation i left for them in the driveway. woohoo!

our mason dude is gonna stop by today to look at the glass block window situation for the bathroom. i don't think i've talked about this here, so here's the short version: company that made the window for me said that if i gave them the dimensions for the opening they'd be able to match the size as closely as possible. well, by close they meant with a 1.25" gap all the way around. this is a rather large area to mortar, so the mason is going to look and see what the best course of action is. we discussed several options last night.

last night i *finally* fixed the one crooked doorway frame i found a couple of weeks ago. this frame was a pain in the ass to deattach due to its location relative to the other frames, the support beam, the wiring up in the joists, an some other crap. to remove three of the nails, i had to take a 10" hack saw blade, bend it so i could fit it in between the frames, wedge it in between the two top plates, and saw very slowly so as not to risk cutting my hands. glad that's over.

in the "yet another stupid holdup" category, i called the electrical inspector today to schedule the rough-in inspection for the electrical work. he can't find a permit on file for this work, so he can't come out. my hands are currently tied on this as only the electrician can take out a permit. and if in fact one was never taken out (i assumed this was taken care of some 6 weeks ago), it takes about 2 weeks to go through. in which case i have to keep the walls open another 2 weeks. grrrrr.

waiting to hear back from the electrican to figure out what to do.

Posted by Len at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

so i'm pricing out some OSI SC175 acoustic caulk for sealing the wall perimeters. OSI caulks are sold at places like home depot, although it's not as common to carry the SC175 since its use is a bit more specific.

anyway, i found a bunch of online sources for this stuff, both regular contractor supply places and places that specialize in soundproofing. to the supply houses, SC175 is just another type of caulk. to the soundproofing places, SC175 is another product that you can beat the word "soundproof" into repeatedly with a baseball bat. and the prices reflect this.

my favorite example:

1 29 oz tube of SC175 from toolup: $3.59
1 29 oz tube of SC175 from soundprooffoam.com: $14.50

i love how the first bullet point for the description on the $14.50 page is "cost effective". yes, paying 4 times as much because your domain name includes "soundproof" is cost effective.

time and time again i talk with people about the studio construction process and invariably they ask, "are you using such-and-such soundproofing material on your walls?" a few very specific items aside, my answer to that is always "no". soundproofing is one of those areas that is very involved and understood by only a small portion of the population, much smaller than the portion of the population which is interested in having some kind of soundproofing done. companies that specialize in soundproofing take advantage of this to the extreme every chance they can get. nearly every single item i'm using that will help with soundproofing is stuff i can either drive down to home depot and buy, or have home depot order for me. the only item i couldn't order through home depot thus far was the resilient channel, and even that i could have obtained at one of the more hard-core building supply houses if i had had the time and desire to track them down. and i would've payed much less for it, too.

soundproofing is, by and large, less about the material and more about the application. all the foam, mass loaded vinyl, and special rubber doohickeys in the world don't do crap compared to what you can do with just 2x4s, drywall, insulation, and caulk. it's amazing how junk gets hyped by these companies under the guise of "it's expensive, so it must be really good."

anyway, time for me to quit bitchin and go get me some caulk.

Posted by Len at 05:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

spent most of the weekend working on other house stuff (e.g., installing the screen door). but today i spent some time working on the exterior side of the vent assembly for the bathroom exhaust fan.

i started by grabbing my hammer drill and a long bit and drilling a pilot hole from the inside through to the outside midway between the joists and midway between the top and bottom of the belt joist. that way i'd have a reference point to work from while doing stuff outside:

then i figured out where i could put the vent hood with the fewest number of brick disruptions. i managed to find a location where i'd only have to remove 2 bricks. so i hammer-drilled a bunch of holes around the joints of those 2 bricks and chiseled out the rest. first one was a bit of a pain since i didn't have good leverage while pulling it out, but the second one came out pretty easily:

then i grabbed my hole saw kit and put a 4" hole through the wood:

next i cut the two bricks i removed so that there'd be a nice rectangular opening. then i mortared the cut pieces back into place:

it's not permanently installed yet (gotta clean up the mortar joints in a bit and all that), but here's a rough idea of what the vent hood will look like when all is done:

Posted by Len at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

got the next (last?) big delivery from home depot today. this is the $1500 of insulation i ordered, the greenboard for the bathroom, and a screen door for our front door.

while the guy was there i counted everything to make sure i got what i ordered, which was 66 batts. i counted 11 packages of 6, so all was cool. for some reason it seemed like more insulation than that, but i figured i must've just underestimated the size of a rolled-up batt of insulation.

after the guy left i started to move things into the basement. i grabbed one of the packages of 6 thinking, "this is only 6 batts of insulation, so it'll be really light". boy was i wrong. this thing weighed quite a bit and it took both stacey and me to carry it into the house. at this point i knew something was wrong. i proceeded to open the plastic wrapping on the package and pulled out one of the rolls only to find it had been compressed to about 1/3 of its size for the wrapping. then i looked and found out that each of these rolls contains not 1, but 9 batts. that means instead of 66 batts i now have 594. that's probably about enough to insulate my entire house twice over.

i went back to home depot and explained that nowhere in their computer or printed literature does it say that there are 9 batts to a roll, nor did the guy who placed the order for me figure this out, nor did the owens corning people point this out during any of the 3 conversations we had with them prior to placing the order. since this obviously wasn't my fault, home depot is going to come take back the excess on monday and refund me for that portion.

so in the end, the reason this cost 9x as much as the non-special-order stuff is because there was 9x as much. turns out the price for the quantity i actually need is nearly the same as the same quantity of the faced insulation. now i'll have money to blow on kick-ass audio cabling! woohoo!

in other news, i started ripping out a couple of bricks from the back wall to drill a hole for the bathroom exhaust fan vent pipe. i've also started doing some drywall out in the garage and will start on the bathroom as soon as i get the vent pipe fully installed.

Posted by Len at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

i think this is the first time i'm able to have a truly happy post about the state of the whole HVAC situation.

kevin found that honeywell recently started making a whole-house dehumidifier system. this is much nicer than the aprilaire system i found, plus it's able to bring in fresh air from the outside, which is an added bonus. and it's really not too much more expensive. the nice thing about this too is it's a self-contained unit, rather than the lennox and carrier systems which rely on the a/c's evaporator coil to do the dehumidification. which means if the a/c goes out, so does my ability to dehumidify. with the honeywell, temperature and humidity control systems are completely separate, so if one or the other goes out it isn't as big a problem.

the other nice thing is i'll be able to have this system installed with the less-expensive furnace, and i can defer replacing the condensing unit until the spring. which means i can hold off on about $4k worth of HVAC stuff for a while and still get the dehumidification i need.

so anyway, ductwork is being installed on thursday, dehumidifier is being ordered, and it and the furnace will tentatively be installed next week.

i can't tell you how happy this makes me. i've been fretting over the whole HVAC thing since before we bought the house, and it feels soooo good to finally pick a solution and run with it.

Posted by Len at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i'm on the verge of whoring myself out in order to pay for the mounting studio-building costs. it's absolutely amazing how quickly all this stuff adds up.

the latest sticker shock comes from pricing out the wiring for the studio. when you add up the 8-channel snakes, midi cable, connectors, boxes, plates, and various other odds and ends, the total comes to around $1000. granted, this price tag is for mogami cable, which is very high quality--but you pay for what you get. initially i was gonna cut some corners with the wiring, until i realized that much of this wiring is going to be permanent or semi-permanent, so it'd be best if i err on the side of higher quality now and know that i'll still be happy with my choice 3 years from now.

HVAC specifics are still up in the air (more on that in a sec), so to keep costs down for the immediate future i'm just dealing with the cabling that absolutely has to be run before putting up the drywall. which translates to the mic and headphone lines for the iso booths. the headphone connections are all cat5, and i just finished running 2 lines to each iso booth. i have about 120' of 2-channel mogami snake cable on order so i can do 2 mic jacks for each booth. the company i'm ordering from also makes these cool surface-mount modular boxes where you can run cat5, mic, 1/4", midi, RCA, or any other kind of cable imaginable and then get n-hole faceplates and connectors for each of the cabling types specially designed to fit that hole size. this solves my problem of needing wiring panels that both look nice and are easily configurable.

so about HVAC stuff. the ductwork is being installed on the 12th and 13th. i still have no clue yet what to do about the furnace. everything's fine except for the humidity control issue. over the past week when it's been cooler but not cold, i've seen the upstairs humidity get as high as 61%, which is suboptimal. both the HVAC guy and i are having a bitch of a time trying to find a system that can do whole-house dehumidification independent of heating cooling and not cost several thousand dollars.

currently the most promising solutions look to be the lennox humiditrol and the carrier infinity system. both use the a/c evaporator coil to dehumidify. i know the lennox system then has a reheat stage to compensate for the temperature drop across the coil. i'm waiting to hear back as to whether the carrier system has a similar reheat stage.

the only problem with both of these is that the humidity-control components aren't really modular; to use them you have to buy into a full-blown system with all these other bells and whistles, which drives up the cost rather quickly. and for both of these systems i'd have to replace the evaporator coil and condensing unit right away if i want to have whole-house dehumidification between now and spring. that alone adds at least $3500 to the price tag.

if i do the full infinity system now, then the system + ductwork would come to $12k. i suspect the lennox system will come with a simliar price tag. i might just have to get one of these systems without the a/c parts to get me through the winter and then deal with that in the spring. although it's not ideal, i could use my room dehumidifiers to hold me over until then.

fortunately at this point in the process there aren't too many more surprises with high price tags that could jump out at me. or at least so i hope.

Posted by Len at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

still stuck in a holding pattern. insulation won't be in until friday at the earliest, and even then, i still have to wait until the ductwork is installed. which was originally supposed to happen this week but the HVAC peeps are swamped and can't come until the end of next week. bleah.

in the meantime, i'm spending a few minutes here and a few minutes there finishing up the bulkheads. i bought yet another drill today to help with some of the spots where the joists are really close together. unfortunately, the one area where i need it the most not even a right-angle drill can fit in there, so i'll need to figure something else out.

i'm also planning out all of the installation audio wiring. each iso room will have 2 mic jacks running to the console, as well as headphone connections and 1/4" patches to connect to the main studio room. the main room will have 3 panels spread across the room. each will have 8 mic jacks, midi in/out, and headphone connections.

i'm still a little on the fence as to what to do about the headphone connectors. currently i have the furman hds-6 headphone distribution system, which is nice, but i know at some point i'll outgrow it and want to get a hunkier headphone system. a weird feature of the hds-6 is that it passes analog data over cat5, thus requiring each mixer box to have 2 cat5 cables coming into it in order to pass all of the channels. their next model up is just as kludgy, with DB25 cables running to each of the boxes.

i think if/when i outgrow my current system (and have buttloads of money to blow), i'll look to the aviom system. nice thing about this is it uses cat5 also, but using a digital protocol over ethernet. with that in mind, i'm going to go ahead and wire up 5 pairs of cat5 jacks (1 in each iso booth, 3 in the main room). the furman headphone mixers can be daisy chained, for a maximum of about 8 mixers total (the limit of 8 is due to the mixer boxes not being powered--they get their juice over the cat5).

then there's the whole issue of hooking up to the computers out in the lounge. there are so many connections to be made there in so many different forms (vga, db25, usb, coax, firewire...) that it'd be really hard to design a panel which accommodates all of them. and is flexible enough to deal with changes down the road. probably what i'll end up doing is putting a hole through the wall just big enough to fish all this stuff through, and then pack in any gaps in the hole as tightly as i can. i'll also have to offset the hole on the lounge side from the one in the studio side to further help with sound attenuation through this weak point.

the nyquil's beginning to kick in and make me loopy, so i'm gonna call it a night.

Posted by Len at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)