Making a room under the garden

[cordura21]

I was thinking of making a room in the garden, below ground level. The main reasons are:

1) I think that being surrounded by lots of ground (mass) is perfect to cut the sound from going out and disturbing the neighbors.
2) not being directly under the house, the sound will also not disturb my family.

At this point, please refute these previous points if I am wrong in my assumptions.

Here are my doubts:

HUMIDITY:I know that the same as basements, you gotta be very careful while constructing so you don't get hunidity problems. I've been reading about it in this forum. Do you think that these problems will be much worse than on a typical basement?

ACOUSTICS: will the huge amounts of mass surrounding the room change drastically (compared to a common room or even a basement)? I suspect that maybe this characteristic will make the room loud and maybe boomy,, since sound will not be able to penetrate the ground surroundings and will get back to the room.
Also, do you think that the room within a room approach will be necessary?

COSTS: do you think that this will be insanely expensive?

SECURITY: do you think that running electrical circuits to this kind of room will be a hazard, since they will be under the garden?

Thanks in advance for you opinions, and please add all the points that you know are important but I don't see.

Cheers, Andrés

[longsoughtfor]

One of the higher end studios in this area is Blue Jay Recording. It was built mostly underground.

http://www.bluejaystudio.com/rendering.html

... It was recently bought by one of the Backstreet Boys... Gack!

Cheers
Kevin.

[Todzilla]

Please help us understand what you mean by a garden. Here in the USA, I am imagining you are digging a horizontal cave beneath a bunch of dirt in which flowers are growing. If that is your concept of garden, I see significant problems.

I suspect that you mean something different. Do you just mean a subterranean space? An underground building?

[cordura21]

yes, basically I am thinking of building a room under the dirt where the grass grows. Like a swimming pool (or a basement), but with dirt over it. much like the drawing Kevin has in his post, but with the room under the ground level.


What are the problems that can arise?

[darrin_h2000]

Gophers!!!... Cave-ins.... or even worse, you could strike oil.

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Air
humidity
Absorbsion
Ground removal
engineering
Forms
Concrete
Equipment
insurance
electrical
$


is this enough?
fitz

[sheppard]

get ready to spend some major $$$$ i can tell you that the entire thing will have to be water proofed and that can be expensive.every penetration through your structure will have to be flashed(electrical,a/c,sump pit ejecter line)and bulled,which is something you would want to hire a pro to do ,for obvious reasons.water proofing material and adhesive are not cheap.
then tou have to buy a sump pump and .then there is the added cost of all the lumber you would need to build your forms plus the concrete and a back hoe to excavate the site.
you would come out cheaper building a room inside a room studio above ground.good luck and keep us posted.

[darrin_h2000]

A bomb shelter may come in handy.

[cordura21]

we have no money for bombs here, we kill each other throwing rocks, so that's not a problem.

Anyways, I thought it would be pretty similar to a basement, but looks like it is not. Why it isn't?

Thanks a lot for the help, if what you say it's true I'll desist from the idea.

Cheers, Andrés

[darrin_h2000]

I would say that the side of a hill may be better.

[Todzilla]

cordura,

You are correct that is it similar to a basement. However, basements typically are dank, musty and not well suited for a studio. I know because that's where mine was originally. I had continual problems with moisture, leakage and evil insect incursions. All of this was mostly due to the fact that the house was 30+ years old and was feeling its years.

New construction will be certainly better, but the redundant systems of waterproofing are intense. If you are envisioning a space that even has dirt on the roof, wow, that sounds like trouble. I'll bet it would be about as cheap to have a floor on top of the studio that is above ground. That way you needn't worry about waterproofing a roof/ceiling.

What problems are you trying to solve with the subterranean approach?

[cordura21]

hey Todzilla. Thanks for your point of view.

I don't want to take space neither from the house or from the garden, so that's why it occured to me to dig a room below the garden. If I did a roof, then I can't use that part of the garden.

And on the other side, I thought that being surrounded by such bigs amounts of mass, it will help soundproofing it, cause I am concerned about disturbing the neighbors.

Isolation is my main worry, both from the neighbors and from my own house.

[barefoot]

Is the basement of the house similarly situated? If so, then drainage is probably not a huge issue in your area and you can use a similar drainage method as the house basement uses - though I would make it better just in case. The only extra difficulty will then be to get the water off the "roof". You'll need to slope the roof and put something like perforated drainage pipe and gravel over top of it before you lay down the dirt.

Acoustically you'll have all the advantages and liabilities of a highly isolated wall system. The advantages are, obviously, that sound doesn't get in or out. The major disadvantage is, well, sound doesn't get out. It's more difficult to dissipate bass frequencies in a room with extremely tight, ridged walls. Some very high-end studios are built with heavy poured concrete shells for excellent sound isolation. However, they often make these shells several times larger than the inner studio shell in order to deal with low frequencies.

barefoot

[barefoot]

Andrés,

Here's an alternative. Instead of making it a dirt roof, make a normal roof and put a patio deck on top. You'll still be able to use the space, but the cost and hassle should be much less than with a dirt roof.

barefoot

[cordura21]

thanks Barefoot. I am attaching a small plan of what it looks like, so it's more graphic to you guys.

This house has no basement. I will find out if this are has drainage problems. I lived 5 kilometers from here and there was a problem with the "napas", which is how we called the water that is under the dirt. But this place is much higher. There is a hhighway that goes up and down thru the region. This place is in the up side, where the highway goes like a tunnel.

I also thought that being so isolated could bring problems dealing with low frequencies.

thanks for the deck idea. I hope you meant much [less] cost :-)


Cheers, Andrés

[HarvardShark]

Blue Jay Studios. So that's where they recorded all those cool soundfonts/samples from Sonicimplants. Pretty impressive studio.