Recording Studio Tips (climate control)

Starise


 
If you have high outdoor temps/humidity where you live, I would consider air conditioning. Most studios need some kind of conditioning. You can condition the air and still allow 10% outdoor air into the system to keep things from getting stale. From the looks of the cabin you probably have at least that with just air cracks in the structure lol!

If you record with a laptop you will greatly reduce both security concerns and some heat/noise problems caused by computer gear.
Maybe this isn't possible and you want outboard gear and such to really get the job done. Then you are faced with removing the heat not only from the cabin but also from the equipment that you plan to run there.

In order to cool the cabin you obviously need to remove more heat than is added. There are Heat load calculations that can be run to determine how many btus of air conditioning you need. You will need the R value of the walls,roof etc.the area in which you live,how the building is situated with respect to sunlight. For a studio you also need to factor in the heat given off by all the equipment and people in the space. ........and how much moola you have to spend.

From your pics I see both good and bad.

Pro- You don't have a very large space to condition.

Cons- There isn't much in the roof to keep heat from radiating right onto you on a hot day.
There is a lot of glass for the size of the space and the building overall does not look to be well insulated but I could be wrong on this!

If I were trying to do this on the cheap I would insulate the space very well especially the area between the roof and the ceiling and allow as much heat from the roof to escape as possible with roof vents( I am guessing that you have a ceiling and your not looking at the roof). Then I would invest in something like a ductless split system A/C or heat pump like this-

Ductless Split System

Don't let the price on that link scare you......I have seen similar Korean made units for much much less. You would also need to decide on what size to buy based on the heat load calcs.......this isn't as complicated as it may seem though. They only make certain sizes of these,just get the one that most closely matches what you need.

All A/C systems need a fan to move the air inside of the space. The newer ductless systems are so quiet you almost can't hear then running.Some of them are so quiet I have to really listen to hear them running.

I'll share a few tricks with you that maybe you could use that have worked well for me. I am in a bedroom studio on a central A/C system but some of this could help you.

  I turn off my A/C system for a short time if I am critically tracking vocals. Most of the time this is only a few minutes so things don't get hot that quickly. If I'm mixing my system is usually not heard anyhow and recording keys or guitars direct does not require me to turn it off.

I use a tower to record with internal heat sink cooling and I have a temp monitor readout on my case that tells me the case temp and the CPU temp. I can manually turn this system off. When I'm tracking vocals I will turn the cooling off and sometimes even cover the case with a sound deadener. It takes at least 20 minutes for my CPU to only start to get hot and it would take much longer than that for things to ever get critical tempwise.....this is how I can track vocals in the same room with my computer and have yet to have any problems!

You could get a small exterior packaged A/C system as well but be prepared to do a little more work to get it installed.The variable speed blower in the better of those are nice and quiet too!If you go that route the way the ducts are routed and the type of materials can greatly reduce noises.

Starise


 Yes Batsbrew those are also good units. I have installed 115 volt ductless
systems similar to this one

The electric connection to the cabin might be lacking though from the pic.