Let us see your practice space/room

[kerble]

Realized I didn't have photos, so I just took these. This is where we rehearse:

[benadrian]

The tone is in the cat carrier.

[Anthony Flack]

Is that a case full of money, like the sort you might exchange a prisoner for?

[Sam]

back of a shed, green light. enough room for two half stacks and a kit, singer is in the front hall.

[alex maiolo]

Evan Rowe, it has been said many times.
Many times by me, in fact.

You rule.

What a cool timeline.

-A

[Anchor]

Last spring I had a shed built and delivered to my backyard by a guy named Dean. It rained every other day or so from January to April, and so it took forever for the ground to be dry enough to have it show up, but eventually they drove it up my driveway and landed a 14'x24' building on my stakes on the first try. It was something to see.

You are my hero. I have a 20x24 shed in my backyard that needs work. I'm inspired to get this thing going, Thanks!

[evanrowe]

Aw, y'all are too kind. It was a ton of work, but it really is great to have all of it at home now. Sorry for the delay, but here's a few answers...

Having been unaware of them until two minutes ago, may I jump aboard the "fuck cankerworms" bandwagon?

Absolutely, I'll get you on the mailing list right away. The latest issue is mostly about Fucking Cankerworms Made All of Us Put These Stupid Bands Around the GD Trees to Try to Trap The Horrorshow Moths and Now GD Squirrels Are Tearing Them Up. It's a real page-turner.

Just out of interest, how much does having a shed like that built and delivered cost? Cheaper than doing it in place?

The building itself, with the center wall, two windows, and three doors, plus the radiant barrier on the inside of the sheathing (which did help keep a good amount of the summer heat out), was $8000 delivered. That's about $4000 less than the cheapest options I found to build on site, and that didn't include site prep, which as you could see from the pictures was, um, minimal with the delivery option.

If you don't mind disclosing, how much did this project cost? Ever since I married into homeowner status, I'm curious about this kind of thing.

Did you have to get any special permits for putting an additional structure on your property?

So after the building costs mentioned above, all the trips to hardware stores and electrical suppliers and weird Amazon deliveries totaled around $3300. This included some tools, though, and it's tough (read: I have not yet bothered) to separate specific practice space costs from shop costs, so YMMV. As to permits, all that stuff varies so much by municipality and location that I probably don't really have useful advice. Inside cities you usually have some kind of permitting to put any kind of structure on your property. Dean did have to get an oversize permit and escort to get the thing here though, and took his chances with the local gendarme as to which streets he could be on. The last mile through the downtown neighborhoods he had a 16-yr-old on the roof with a pole to fend off branches and power lines.

Again, sorry to have taken so long to reply, and feel free to hit me with more questions. I'll try to be more responsive and less bad at the Internet!

[Anthony Flack]

What you did is fucking awesome and if I had a larger back yard I'd already be drawing up plans.

[madmanmunt]

Some of your spaces/rooms are so clean I wonder how you manage to produce rock.

If you can take your girlfriend to your practice space, then it's too clean.

Or she's too dirty.

[Anthony Flack]

Our practice space is full of roaches and beer bottles and my girlfriend is in the band.

[kerble]

Our practice space is my living room. Why the fuck would I have a dirty living room?
The basement is going to be turned into another rehearsal room when I want to use drums and get really loud. It's not going to be dirty, either. My girlfriend lives here/upstairs.

Is that a case full of money, like the sort you might exchange a prisoner for?

It's a one-off record I did for Tourism called $200,000. It's 100K in fake $100 bills with a dvd sealed in a lucite box. it costs $200,000.

[Andy]

Our practice space is full of roaches

What, you don't have ashtrays?

[Anthony Flack]

Well, empty dip containers and beer bottles are kinda like ashtrays. (Of course I didn't mean cockroaches, eugh)

[Andy]

Well, empty dip containers and beer bottles are kinda like ashtrays. (Of course I didn't mean cockroaches, eugh)

Oh, sorry. I guess I overestimated your level of keepin' it real.

[Anthony Flack]

We do clean the practice space, though. Otherwise the beer bottles in particular would just keep piling up. Actually, Dee cleans the practice space and complains that nobody else cleans the practice space, and then I point out that I maintain the gear and nobody else can use a soldering iron so I'm doing my bit.

[evanrowe]

We're finally tackling the HVAC issue with the space. Right now I can't afford one of those sweet mini split ductless jobs, and so we're going with a portable unit that can be in either room as necessary. The shop side has windows, so that's easy. But it'll usually live in the rock side of the building so instruments are kept at a reasonable temperature and humidity, and so I'm trying to sort out the exhaust hose routing and would love input.

Since I successfully knocked our volume level down, I'm loath to put too many holes in walls. The exhaust hose is short (roughly five feet) so as to reduce static pressure and they tell you not to bend it to avoid back pressure. Both of those things suck for me (and potentially my neighbors). I'd originally intended to use a larger diameter insulated duct in the dead space between inner and outer walls to extend the exhaust spirally before exiting the building, but I'm betting these units aren't really designed to overcome even the slightest increase in static pressure. My options:

1. Vent the unit directly through the inner wall straight to the outer wall. Keeps it short and kink-free. Likely also vents loud metal guitar and drums music very effectively, though, so not too into this plan.

2. Vent the unit through the inner wall only into the dead space of that half of the building. Install a pretty serious vent fan in the roof of that side to suck out that foul air. Makes A/C unit happy with short exhaust run, puts distance between the holes in walls to mitigate sound transmission. Potentially grows disgusting shit though, as exhaust will be hot and somewhat humid (unit uses some moisture from room air to cool condenser, so vapor leaves with exhaust).

3. Vent unit through inner wall and shared wall into shop side of building, use window fan to exhaust hot air from that room. Short exhaust run, indirect route for sound transmission. Shop will get hot though.

I'm leaning toward #3 right now, but would appreciate suggestions if anyone's ever done anything like this or has HVAC knowledge. I have almost literally none. Thank you!

[cneutron]

We're finally tackling the HVAC issue with the space. Right now I can't afford one of those sweet mini split ductless jobs, and so we're going with a portable unit that can be in either room as necessary. The shop side has windows, so that's easy. But it'll usually live in the rock side of the building so instruments are kept at a reasonable temperature and humidity, and so I'm trying to sort out the exhaust hose routing and would love input.

Since I successfully knocked our volume level down, I'm loath to put too many holes in walls. The exhaust hose is short (roughly five feet) so as to reduce static pressure and they tell you not to bend it to avoid back pressure. Both of those things suck for me (and potentially my neighbors). I'd originally intended to use a larger diameter insulated duct in the dead space between inner and outer walls to extend the exhaust spirally before exiting the building, but I'm betting these units aren't really designed to overcome even the slightest increase in static pressure. My options:

1. Vent the unit directly through the inner wall straight to the outer wall. Keeps it short and kink-free. Likely also vents loud metal guitar and drums music very effectively, though, so not too into this plan.

2. Vent the unit through the inner wall only into the dead space of that half of the building. Install a pretty serious vent fan in the roof of that side to suck out that foul air. Makes A/C unit happy with short exhaust run, puts distance between the holes in walls to mitigate sound transmission. Potentially grows disgusting shit though, as exhaust will be hot and somewhat humid (unit uses some moisture from room air to cool condenser, so vapor leaves with exhaust).

3. Vent unit through inner wall and shared wall into shop side of building, use window fan to exhaust hot air from that room. Short exhaust run, indirect route for sound transmission. Shop will get hot though.

I'm leaning toward #3 right now, but would appreciate suggestions if anyone's ever done anything like this or has HVAC knowledge. I have almost literally none. Thank you!

Evan! This documentation process is awesome man, well done.
You've made me feel remiss for not posting up the pictures from the 3 or 4 month process it took for us to build ours summer before last.

Honestly, seems like you've done everything right here, no wonder it sounds great!
The HVAC situation is one that we've wrestled with as well, we ended up never coming to a solution... which means... well... let's say i'm glad we're taking this summer off. That said: it's going to need to happen and we will probably do #3 as well. We built a floating wall on ours, but didn't think to install venting to put it outside or whatever. So we're kind of boned.
Did I mention we're also on the second floor, yeah... so there is that too.

For those that go this route of building the ultimate rock space, I cannot recommend highly enough this stuff: this stuff

Insulation made from cotton fiber, this is remarkable stuff!
You don't even need a breather or anything to apply it because it is made from recycled blue jeans.

For us we went the following layers: foundation ---> insulation ---> sheetrock ---> mass loaded vinyl ---> homasote
for the walls

Mass loaded vinyl is this stuff:

which, to say it is not cheap is an understatement. It does the stuff though.

If you have the budget for it, green glue (who are key to any soundproofing process!)
also make a sealant. Which I did not use (i used the regular ol' liquid nails)

but of course
ACTUAL green glue is essential as well if you can swing it.

I got to know the people in SF that sell this stuff on a first name basis by the time we were done.

Looks like you went the super kick ass wood floor route, but if sound below is an issue (which, looks like it most definitely isn't, unless you are disturbing those worms there)
Soundproofing mat under the carpet is always good.


this stuff

and lastly... is the homasote board, which is basically just like Sheetrock to hang, but made of cellulose fiber.

I have pictures of our place, but it pales in comparison really... the room was never big to begin with, and this definitely made it smaller. But it's a pretty great setup. Especially for here in the bay area where the idea of having yard basically is short hand for: "I am a millionaire."

[projectMalamute]

Out in the garage:

phpBB [media]

[morespaceecho]

living room/occasional practice space:

[Red Square]

living room/occasional practice space:

wow, very nice!