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Post by sponge on Apr 4, 2021 12:29:21 GMT -5
I have a small 8x12 room in my basement that I was thinking about setting my 2As up in. They're in the living room now which is about 10x15. It seems to be able to barely follow the guidelines... 3ft from side walls, 6ft apart, and an equilateral triangle to your ears. Do you guys think this would be worth pursuing? I'd really like to have a dedicated area for my audio stuff... but it's hard in my 600sf bungalow. I made a doodle to help visualize:
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Post by sponge on Apr 4, 2021 18:37:24 GMT -5
I took all the junk out of the room and lugged the hundreds of pounds of gear down the stairs to test the sucker out. It's a little cramped, but I didn't hate it. I put my computer chair in there and listened to two records. It could definitely use a couch or nicer chair. The (ikea kallax) unit between the speakers was already in the room, so I figured I'd leave it. The speakers could probably be better positioned with it gone. The floor is very uneven so that'd take some work to level.
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Post by sponge on Apr 12, 2021 19:03:08 GMT -5
There's a wall I could relocate, which would make the room 8.5x18 It seems like I can follow the room placement guidelines this way. Is it necessary to have room behind the listener? With this setup I'd be against the rear wall. Anyone have any experience with very rectangular rooms and SDAs? Any input would be very appreciated!
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F1nut
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Post by F1nut on Apr 13, 2021 1:29:36 GMT -5
You should be able to make that work. With the speakers 6 feet apart try sitting 6 or 7 feet back, which will leave plenty of room behind your head.
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Post by jstas on Apr 13, 2021 12:16:41 GMT -5
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Post by sponge on Apr 14, 2021 4:02:02 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback, guys. Maybe because the sda have unique placement requirements, I couldn’t find anything online that made this seem like a good idea. Most other speakers seem to prefer the short wall.
This seems like the best spot in the house. There’s no plumbing of any kind overhead, and it’s as far away from the WAF zone as you can get. I remember looking at GIK acoustic website a while back and they had free acoustic treatment advise. Anyone have any experience with them?
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F1nut
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Post by F1nut on Apr 14, 2021 12:01:23 GMT -5
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Post by sponge on Jul 3, 2021 12:29:23 GMT -5
The current height from the concrete to the joists is 6'10", and with a ceiling and floor would probably be 6'7". I'm 6' tall, so that works for me. My friend suggested removing the floor, lowering it 8", and installing radiant heat in the new concrete floor. It sounds like a ton of work, and I'm on the fence.
Anyone ever lower their basement floor? Do you think an extra 8" would be worth all that work for the sound?
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F1nut
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Post by F1nut on Jul 3, 2021 21:10:02 GMT -5
Have you considered an addition?
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Post by sponge on Jul 4, 2021 7:57:23 GMT -5
I don't want to make an addition because of the (NJ) property tax ramifications. My neighbor across the street is at $8200/year, and I'm at $4800 (and slowly rising every year). I spent some time making a drawing of the basement, and I think I can make the small floor plan work. If I don't enjoy it as a listening room, I'd still enjoy having a quiet, finished room in the basement with heated floors. What do you think of the layout? I've been in touch with soundproof cow, but haven't ordered anything yet because I'm still figuring things out. Looks like I'm gonna go with the quietbatt, double drywall with green glue and isotrax. I'm thinking of going with windowless exterior doors for the listening room entrance and the closet with the electrical panel. I haven't found a purpose built soundproof door that's in the budget. I figured putting the panel in the closet is a better idea than trying to soundproof around it, in case I have to do any electrical work in the future. It brings the room back down to 15x8, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. I received a sample of Ceiling Link (ceilinglink.com) for a flush mount ceiling panel setup, and I think I'm going to go with it and some quality tiles. Thanks again for the input.
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Post by gardenstater on Jul 4, 2021 8:30:01 GMT -5
I don't want to make an addition because of the (NJ) property tax ramifications. My neighbor across the street is at $8200/year, and I'm at $4800 (and slowly rising every year). I spent some time making a drawing of the basement, and I think I can make the small floor plan work. If I don't enjoy it as a listening room, I'd still enjoy having a quiet, finished room in the basement with heated floors. What do you think of the layout? I've been in touch with soundproof cow, but haven't ordered anything yet because I'm still figuring things out. Looks like I'm gonna go with the quietbatt, double drywall with green glue and isotrax. I'm thinking of going with windowless exterior doors for the listening room entrance and the closet with the electrical panel. I haven't found a purpose built soundproof door that's in the budget. I figured putting the panel in the closet is a better idea than trying to soundproof around it, in case I have to do any electrical work in the future. It brings the room back down to 15x8, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. I received a sample of Ceiling Link (ceilinglink.com) for a flush mount ceiling panel setup, and I think I'm going to go with it and some quality tiles. Thanks again for the input. Is the wall behind the couch a load bearing one? It would be nice if you could move it back a bit and make the closet a little smaller and move the furnace. Oh......and tell me about it with the outrageous NJ property tax. My home and property is not huge and they are getting me very close to $10K now, before the Homestead Benefit, which we didn't get the first COVID year. My town is a bit lower than some of the surrounding towns too. Ridiculous, just keeps going higher!
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Post by sponge on Jul 4, 2021 11:05:21 GMT -5
There's cinder block pillars every 5 feet along that wall, so I can't go further unless I could live with three pillars in the room.
Though I'd like to ditch the furnace all together and install radiant heat upstairs one day. Forced hot air isn't for me. Loud, dry, and dusty.
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Post by gardenstater on Jul 4, 2021 11:32:32 GMT -5
There's cinder block pillars every 5 feet along that wall, so I can't go further unless I could live with three pillars in the room.Though I'd like to ditch the furnace all together and install radiant heat upstairs one day.Forced hot air isn't for me. Loud, dry, and dusty.Perhaps you could change them out for round steel lolly columns? Probably wouldn't effect the sound very much since they are diffusors due to the curvature, and could be wrapped with acoustic foam. If their location is a problem right where the couch would need to be pushed back to, maybe a small beam bridging two lolly columns with the couch in between them?
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Post by jstas on Jul 9, 2021 14:11:47 GMT -5
Geez, there's alot to unpack here. So first, basement floor. Yeah, you can do it BUT (<--REALLY big but) things matter. First issue is, what kind of foundation/floor do you have? Is there a french drain? If you have a floating slab, the foundation walls should extend significantly below the slab. Several inches. But, this is NJ and depending on the age of your house, that idea is a crap shoot. If you do dig out your basement and you end up impacting a french drain or weeping tile or the foundation footing, you busted up a slab for nothing and now have to put it all back. So you might not have 8 inches to play with there. You would need to get a foundation expert in to give you an idea of what can be done. However, it can be really expensive. They can also build a new foundation under the house but you're talking tens of thousands of dollars but you would get the basement height your looking for. That is if your water table is low enough that you have the space to go down a few more inches. It looks like you have a block foundation, though, so they likely would not need to build a new wall, just jack it up and support it while they put a new footing and new block underneath to get you the height you want. But they will have to dig outside as well because they will need to do waterproofing and a new drainage system. But, everything going in to the basement like electrical, water and sewer might have to be extended because the floor is now lower. The furnace stuff would have to be extended too or the furnace would have to be put on a footing. It's a boatload of labor and with a $4800 tax bill in NJ, your house value is probably around $150K. You would spend almost that amount doing this. So unless you have slab/foundation problems that are threatening the integrity of the house, you will never recoup that money. A few grand to make something the way you want, yeah, no big deal. But 6 figures to get 3 more inches of ceiling height is throwing good money after a fiscally bad idea. IMO at least. Even if you ditch the furnace and do radiant floor heating you are still going to need a heat source. Even if it is a tankless heating system. You're still going to need a boiler with an exhaust system unless you go with electric but that will require big power and your electric bill will skyrocket. So a gas boiler system for the radiant floor heating will work but you're still going to need the exhaust. But you can move it to a different spot where it will be less intrusive and gain you some space. That said, radiant floor heating is going to be expensive. You will need to tear up and replace every floor in the house as well as run pipes to each room. A feed and a return. I think last I checked with my plumber, he estimated $5K, on average, per room and that's "inexpensive" because I already have hot water heat with piping to every room. To do the whole house, $25-$40K depending on the quality of the materials. But I got other problems to fix before I go doing something like that. So looking at your room there, see the attached image for reference to this. That closet next to the stairs, is there a reason you can't cut that in half and put a small hall with a door to the room there instead of on the same wall as the shower? If you did that (I drew it crappily in the attached image) you would get that entire wall and might be able to fit your SDA set up there. That would solve your distance problem but the narrow room would need acoustic treatments on the walls, for sure, or you'll get crosstalk inducing reflections. But with acoustic panels or treatments, that wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal as the distance to the sweet spot would be. Food for thought there. As far as what Gardenstater said about the lolly columns, that's possible but you really need a structural engineer to look at it. You can't put a small beam between two posts to eliminate 3 posts and replace it with them without considerations of where what your point loads on that main beam are. Is it doable? Yeah, sure is! But, it's not going to be cheap even if you do it cheap. If you do it wrong, you will fuck up your entire house. What would honestly need to be done to eliminate those block columns and open up the floor plan is to replace the center beam with a new beam, preferably a new LVL laminated beam. You'd have to build temporary jack walls on either side of the current beam after you jacked the floor above level. Then support those sides on either side of the beam at that level with the jack walls. Then you have to cut out the old center beam and install the new one. Might have to go through that window in the bathroom and take out some walls to get it in there. Then you put the beam on new footings at either end. Those footings have to have holes busted in the slabs and then footings for them dug down and concrete poured to whatever code says is necessary. Then new support posts get put in and the new LVL goes on those posts. You attach the floors joists above to the new LVL with joist hangers. You'll likely need to use support columns because to get a beam to hold 2 stories across what looks like an 18 foot span it's going to be probably 18 inches tall at least and will stick down into the basement awkwardly. So yeah, you can do it but doing it right is going to be an expensive and involved undertaking. Again, if you don't have an issue with the current beam, don't fix it if it ain't broke. Also, check your local codes for the electrical panel closet. You need a certain distance in front of the panel and that could change your closet size and listening room size. But, if you do go with radiant floor heating and get a tankless heater for it, you'd be able to put all of that in that closet too. Additionally, with the radiant floor heating and tankless system, you can size it to eliminate your hot water heater too. Worth a consideration if you're going through heavy renovations. That Ceiling Link stuff looks sharp! I might go and do that myself in my basement!
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Post by sponge on Jul 9, 2021 16:37:00 GMT -5
Thanks for the input, jstas. Jesus, maybe F1nut is onto something with the addition. Even if it doubles the taxes, $400/mo for a new section of house is starting to seem reasonable. I'm in the construction industry (asphalt paving) so I have access to heavy equipment, trucks and friends with strong backs, but maybe the basement floor is biting off more than we'd like to chew. Whether we take the basement floor out or not, I'd like to put in french drains around the perimeter. It's a walk out basement, so I could just run a pipe from the french drains down the hill in the back. This morning there was a very small amount of water in a corner after the substantial rain we had last night. I like your modification to the layout, but there's a damn pillar in the way. I should've put the pillars on the schematic to begin with. I found this picture on the web of an AV room with columns in it, and it doesn't seem like a terrible idea: Another thing I found on the web: These "activated carbon" bass traps seem pretty serious. They sell DIY plans on their website. www.acousticfields.com/product/acda-10-studio/?nab=1Back to the drawing board for the time being.
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