Need Air Conditioning Advice

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kriskaudio

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Hello, :)

I'm building a control room and iso booth in the garage of my condo and need advice on running the air cond. to the space. The booth will be for voice overs mainly.

We live in a condo in Southern California that have only the garages on the ground floor, with separate entrances. It is a long tandem-style garage and our unit is directly above our garage. The condo also is partially built into a hillside, so about 6 feet of the garage is in subterranean depth (which is the portion where my studio will be).
So far I have floated a floor, and framed and dry-walled the basic space that is about 11x11 feet. My iso booth is 6x4 and will be in this space as well. I have run 25 feet of 4" insulated flex duct into the room from the remainder of the garage. I have "y'd" the duct so that half will go to the booth and the other half to the control room.

Since it's a condo, I'm limited on what and where I can build. since the garage is separate from the living area, the only place to put an conditioner is in the garage.
My plan thus far is to buy some kind of air conditioner and place it near the large garage door, perhaps mounting it up on a platform that I could build on the wall and run my 25' duct to it. I'm trying to get it as far away as possible from the booth.
My questions:
what kind of air conditioner should I get? window? wall? portable?
has anyone built any kind of iso box for their air conditioner? is this doable?

Since I'm doing voice overs and narration, outside noise is one of my biggest concerns. We live in a very quiet complex, but I'm concerned about the potential air cond. noise. But since we live in very warm area, (110 degrees in the summer) no air cond. is out of the question.

Any advice? :confused:
 
How warm do you expect it to get in that corner of the garage? Generally speaking anything below grade is a heat sink and stays a good 10-20 degrees below ambient. The rule of thumb I remember from looking at earth-berm houses was that the subsurface temp was near 55 constant regardless. This could be way off but I think the biggest issue is keeping outside air out. A simple exhaust fan may be sufficient if coupled with a source of cool make up air. If the rest of the house is air-conditioned is there an easy way to fetch make-up air from the living space? Then you just run a fan in the main garage and eliminate compressor noise.

I may be all wet on this - it's a long time since I looked at this shit. It may or may not be worth looking in to.


lou
 
A few things come to mind:

1) you said you have 25' of ducting going to your space, but are you providing a return path for the air?? What goes in has to come back out.

2) 4" flex tubing is going to be pretty restrictive. A wall unit or other type of small unit may not have enough flow to push air through 25' of 4" flex duct. And then consider it needs the return path.

3) All an air conditioner does is move heat from one space to another. If you take heat out of your studio, you will be dumping it in your garage (if I'm understanding your plan correctly). Eventually, the garage will get hot and the a/c won't be able to cool your studio. You need to provide a way for the a/c exhaust to dump to the outside.

I have a wall unit in my studio and turn it off when I'm actually recording. It'll get warm if I leave it off too long. When it does, I take a break and cool the room back down. I'm in Texas and also see 100's during the summer.

hth,
 
I'm in the booth all day long, so no air is not an option. Computer and body heat alone will make it bake in there. Plus I'll be recording other clients, so it's really a need.

My original plan was to make an isolation box for the a/c unit (which I have yet to buy...as I'm still in the research phase here). This iso box would, in theory, need a hole cut for the a/c exhaust which I plan on ducting up to my near-by water heater's up draft vent. Then other holes could be cut for the cool air, and air intake.

Bottom line is the place is going to get hot and I've got to do something about it in the quietest way possible.
 
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