All In One Room Build - UK

#1

Hi all
My first post. Hello!
I've been converting my garage into an 'all-in-one' studio space over the lockdown period and I'm now at the point where I would value your help with the final stages.

Here are some background details of the garage conversion:
Location - I live in the UK in a rural area.
The garage is about 4m from the road.
Nearest neighbours are 30m and 80m away.

Original Garage Construction
The building is a single storey garage and utility room attached to the house.
- Walls: Single wall construction built from solid concrete block 250mm (10") thick. Exterior is pebble dashed and the interior is sand/cement rendered and painted.
- Roof: Pitched roof using prefabricated timber roof trusses with slates.
- Floor: Concrete slab floor.
The original garage size is 5.3m x 4.7m x 2.35m high.

Studio Build Construction
Room in room construction using fluffy filled timber stud walls and ceiling using OSB, plasterboard and lots of caulk!
Finished room dimensions are 4.9m x 4.4m x 2.3m high.
The metal garage door remains but has been blocked off with a stud wall using cement fibre board before the inner leaf was built.
The heating boiler has been partitioned off and ventilated. I suspect this is triple leaf but can't be helped.
HVAC - Not proper AC as such but ventilated with intake and extract silencers in the loft and vented to the outside using 6" ducting. The extract side has the fan.

Present Situation and Work Still To Be Done
1. I'm about to start making and hanging the studio door, then laying a floor and second fix trim.
2. Electrical installation - all surface mounted.
3. Acoustic treatment consisting mainly of a full rear wall absorber, two front wall absorbers, a cloud and first reflection panels.
4. I also plan on building the studio desk and a couple of moveable 1.8m high (6') gobo's.

I will post again with some questions.

Finally, many thanks to Stuart for this incredible resource and also to all of you who have taken time to share the work and progress on your own studios.
So much already learned. Thank you!

Dave

#2

DaveRF wrote:Source of the postThe original garage size is 5.3m x 4.7m x 2.35m high.
Finished room dimensions are 4.9m x 4.4m x 2.3m high.

Hello Dave. Just to let you know that Stuart has been ill for a few months and is still absent, so he is either recouperating, working hard to clear a backlog or both.

Can I just ask you to confirm the dimensions? The gap between inner and outer rooms and the inner room mean you have used up 40cm from the length, 30cm from the width and 5cm from the height. Is that tight? Just how much space is there between the roof and the ceiling and how thick is the new ceiling?

One more question: is the garage door sealed airtight around its edges?

#3

Hi Starlight
Thanks for your reply. I noticed that Stuart wasn't currently active on the forum. I do hope he is well.

Dimensions
I rounded my dimensions for ease of reading but you are correct, I lost around 30cm from the width and 35cm from the length. (Sealing up the garage door protruded beyond the original wall so I lost a little bit more.)
Accurate finished size is 4.95m long x 4.38m wide
The ceiling height is an average as the floor falls away slightly towards the garage door.

This is how the ceiling was built.

The loft is a regular double pitched roof space

With the garage door on the outside of the building, I sealed it on all sides and screwed it to its frame.
On the inside I sealed the timber frame that blocks it off and then more sealant as the cement fibre board was fitted.

Here's a slightly ropey panoramic pic of the room from about a week past.
You can see where I've started the framework for the rear wall absorber.

#4

Greetings DaveRF,

HVAC - Not proper AC as such but ventilated

What are you doing to control humidity?

All the best,

Paul

#5

Hi Paul
I do take your point. This was one of the decisions I had to make in the design.
In this part of the world HVAC in domestic situations is pretty much unheard of.
Temperatures here generally don't exceed 20C (68F) and high humidity is a rare thing.
So, I have decided not to include AC, at least not at first.

However, when things are up and running I will monitor the humidity level in the room and if things get sticky, then we'll have to revisit the HVAC thing.
Given how I have put the ventilation in, I would hope that a retrofit won't be too hard should it prove necessary.

Dave

#6

Hi Dave

I reached a similar conclusion, being UK based also. I bought a dehumidifier and a timer plug and will have that running overnight when I'm not in the room to bring humidity down. Worth considering?

Cheers
Gareth

#7

DaveRF wrote:Source of the postGiven how I have put the ventilation in, I would hope that a retrofit won't be too hard should it prove necessary.

A multisplit AC is a separate system to the ventilation so fitting an AC is not dependent on how you fitted your ventilation other than the AC would ideally be placed near the fresh air vent in the room so that you are not conditioning air just before it gets removed from the room; that would be pointless.

#8

Greetings Dave,

Yes, I'm quite familiar with the UK climate. I have spent a considerable amount of time there: my late mother-in-law lived in London, and my life in academia took throughout the UK 2-3 times/year for conferences and research.

Gareth's method is a good choice to keep the humidity under control. Starlight's suggestion of a split system would also work perfectly.

All the best,

Paul

#9

Sounds like a good plan Gareth, thanks - I'll definitely bear that in mind.
It would help put to rest the concern that I had in deciding not to install AC.
Are you talking about the small portable dehumidifiers in around £50- £100 or something more substantial?

Dave

#10

Hi Starlight
So, if I've understood you correctly.
A split system processes the air that has already been drawn into the room.
It doesn't connect at all with the ventilation ducting.
Is that correct?

Dave

#11

Yes, Dave, you got it. A mini-split AC conditions the air it draws in, air from the room. That's why you would ideally place an AC near where the ventilation is pumping fresh air into the room. My studio is an example of this so feel free to have a look at the last photo in post 109 of my build topic, here, and then read what I wrote above that photo. Post 111 might also interest you.

An AC that connects with the ducts would be a ducted AC, something quite different to a multi-split. More studios seem to use multi-split ACs than ducted, possibly to minimise noise transfer through the ducts from one studio room to another.

And, talking of dehumidification, don't forget that multi-split ACs can dehumidify as well as cool, heat and just be a fan.

#12

Thank you Starlight.
I have been reading your build with great interest but I'll check those posts you mentioned in more detail.
By the way, I'm seriously impressed with your hexagons. Excellent work!

Dave

#13

DaveRF wrote:Source of the post Are you talking about the small portable dehumidifiers in around £50- £100 or something more substantial?

Indeed - I bought one for about £80 and have it set to bring the humidity down to 50%. I only need to empty it every three days or so at the moment, although I'm sure in the winter it'll be worse. Of course it'll do nothing to bring humidity up when it is the summer, or cool the air, but we don't get that problem often do we!

Cheers
Gareth

#14

Manufacturers of wooden musical instruments - I have researched mainly guitars and pianos - should ideally have around 45% relative humidity. I have watched my hygrometer in recent years and see it bottom out over the winter at around 35% and peak in the summer around 80%.

Geography is important. Slovakia has a continental climate and the country is landlocked, so have a look at this page which shows figures for the UK.

#15

A quick update on progress.
Floor is down, door is hung and temporarily glazed with one pane and wiring has commenced.
I'm really trying to get to the point of being able to get a baseline measurement in REW.

The Cloud
Also started work on the cloud. I've built an outline frame and got the hanging points located.
The cloud is a centre panel 1.4m wide with two 'wings' each 0.6m wide. (Done this way to suit the fabric size)

I'm considering making the centre panel hard backed but leaving the wings soft backed.

Is this ok or should it be all hard backed or all soft backed?

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