HVAC Mini Split and Fresh Air Ventilator for your Studio

[@michaeltablet8577]

Building a new studio next year. This is a big help! Thank you!

[@TrueSoundTV]

Absolutely, good luck!

[@McAndriu]

Here you solved it :)

[@LucidTheater]

Great video, thank you! Concise and educational. I'm working towards installing a ventilation system myself, holy cow the HVAC industry is quite a rabbit hole! 😵‍💫Everything still running smoothly 2 years later?

[@nathanaeldavenport2251]

I had wondered about fresh air when I watched your HVAC videos last year. Were you operating for a while without the fresh air intake? I know CO2 buildup can eventually become a problem, especially if the doors stay closed for a while. I've never heard of anybody outright suffocating, but high CO2 levels can cause mental impairment and fatigue. Did you notice anything like that before you had your HRV installed? (I ask because I am building a single room studio inside my house, and am debating whether or not I need to run ductwork to get air from the rest of the house moving through the room. I will have a mini-split cooling/heating the air.) By the way... thanks for all this effort to share your knowledge. Seriously. The build itself was enough of an undertaking on its own, I'm sure; but documenting as thoroughly as you did was no small feat either, on top of everything else.

[@adriannaylor8181]

Thank you Ryan!

[@TrueSoundTV]

Thanks for watching

[@MacNifty]

When it comes to the ventilator you can make your own just buying 1² piece of duckwork and by the forced air fans that are round that sit in the duct. I think they are 8 or 6" and you can put a filter inside of there that is folded in half so you have double filtration from a regular furnace filter folded in half. Get creative people you don't have to spend thousands of dollars you can spend less than a $100 and be suited. That's where they are coming in and because the room is pressurized you will need air to flow out as you are bringing in pressure in. A simple dryer vent with a box around it like a baysport or like you would for a subwoofer with a square Port leading to that exterior vent so the noise is not heard from Outdoors. As the room pressure rises from the Duct Fan the pressure will release through the dryer vent you can also have a sealed vent so when you really do want it all sealed you can seal the duct and the vent.

[@TrueSoundTV]

Yes you could obviously do that but I built this whole studio to be soundproof, and just drilling holes through the space would totally defeat that. Also when you’re pulling in cold air during the winter, things will start to freeze up and therefore the unit does need to have some sort of shut off

[@dboytheoriginal2626]

In northern cali we deal with cold winter and a hot summer of consisten 105

[@TrueSoundTV]

Yeah we get to about 90, not 105!!!!

[@MacNifty]

Cooling in the vocal booth and in the control room is super critical. Not to mention the isolation of the noise of the motors and circuits as well as the air moving. For people with a lower budget not affording a high expensive hidden system isolated system you can go with a very large blade and propeller and go at a low speed with a little motor and you can move a lot of air with 4ft propellers and Blades. Look at Big Ass Fans. Yes it is a legitimate company. The goal of the studio isn't necessarily to be inefficient using air conditioners but to keep the air moving in and out with fresh air to keep the heat moving out. With a whole room of gear I will heat a room up very fast when you are burning over 3000 Watts it's just like two space heaters on full blast. When I do vocals though... like sex, I like to sweat a little bit it keeps the adrenaline and the metabolism as well as the energy of the event recording more live and more realistic with the event that will be redone on stage.

[@MacNifty]

Interesting enough though when it comes to covid I haven't heard anything mentioned about recording studios or performance artists who share microphones. All that spit and slobber. LOL.

[@TrueSoundTV]

Yeah mics get pretty gross lol

[@jjdavis7320]

What did your system cost?

[@peterparkour2918]

Do you need a ducted unit to allow fresh air intake?

[@TrueSoundTV]

Yeah it’s pretty important, because “technically” you’ll run out of fresh air

[@MacNifty]

Another way of keeping the room cool is simply liquid cooling all your equipment that is rack mounted and you create a rack liquid cooling tube system with copper piping. You can even use plastic as long as it's always running a cooler surface to the heated surface you will cool all your rack gear and won't even heat up the room at all and your equipment will last a lot longer your capacitors and resistors won't dry out as fast. It's actually better than air conditioning the room because these items are also inside of enclosed areas and if you don't have control panel fans blowing air in-and-out of the racks and cabinets you have stale warm dry electrical killing air it also creates a static field. So be sure that you cool your gear and ventilate your gear at the very least like with car stereo amplifiers was amplifiers was a sealed rack run one fan in and a fan out keep your equipment maintained. Because your projects can die even if your room is conditioned the equipment is not conditioned.