Marc Alan Goodman’s Building Strange Weather Blog: Rain Rain Rain
Latest in the “Building Strange Weather Blog” series by producer/engineer and studio owner Marc Alan Goodman. Click to start at Step 1: Finding A New Home; #2: Design; #3: Waiting For Permits (Part 1) and #4: (Part 2); and #5: Stops & Starts, #6: Demolition, #7: The Structural Work and #8 The Joys of Home Ownership.
Just when I thought the Department of Buildings would my biggest road block, nature stepped in and showed me who’s boss. The structural repairs to the building have been finished for weeks, but the holes in the roof and walls they caused can’t be sealed up until the rain stops.
First was the storm two weeks before Irene. That was actually the worst since we weren’t expecting it. The roof was still wide open with a piece of plywood laying over it that read “CAUTION: HOLO ROOF”. An intriguing typo! Maybe I was too excited about the possibility of owning a “holo-roof” (holographic?!) to worry about the potential repercussions. Meanwhile, the rain was excited about swooping right in and soaking the hell out of the place. And insects were excited about the new stagnant lake that developed in my basement. It’s like a party down there.
Not much can be done while we’re waiting for the weather to take our side, but we’ve been doing it anyway.
The original chimney was removed (causing yet another hole in our exterior) and is now being replaced by one along the north wall, which will eventually go through the studios only closet space (who needs storage anyway?). The plywood radiant flooring system has been installed in the second floor. This took quite a bit of rain as well, but seems to be fine.
And the real exciting step forward is that the springs and grid to hang the ceiling of the studio have been installed. Right now the grid is pressed up against the ceiling joists, but once we hang three layers of 5/8 drywall from it the springs will compress and the ceiling should hang about three quarters of an inch below the joists. We were able to keep the drop so minimal by hanging the springs from the sides of the old wooden joists instead of from the bottom, as we would have had to do if we had completely replaced the structure with steel. Our planned ceiling height is only about ten feet, which while comfortable doesn’t leave us a lot of room to play with. Six inches saved feels like a mile.
Then, two weeks after that first storm, Hurricane Irene came to visit. If you were in NYC you know, but if not it’s hard to describe what a strange occurrence it was. Just ten or so blocks from here people were all evacuated from their homes, and due to the transit and taxi shutdown the whole city was quiet. Luckily for me both my current and future studios are set on higher ground. All we got was a slight addition to our basement lake. There were a couple of things stored in the basement on top of wood palates, including our RPG diffusers for the back wall of the control room. It seems like everything most likely survived, if damply.
The good thing the hurricane brought was a couple clear days afterward, which gave us time to put a first layer down on one of our four (!) roofs and to pour the concrete roof over the control room. Once that was done we got right into hanging the HVAC ducts. In order to keep them quiet Wes [Lachot, studio designer/acoustician] specified an extremely low air velocity for the system, which means we need to have huge ducts. However one look at them told me they were too huge.
The view down Graham Avenue, post-hurricane.
I had to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate our needs in order to size them in a way that wouldn’t cost us the ceiling height we had just saved in the live room. Our engineer, Bruce, while obviously overworked still made time to work out the details within a couple of days of my asking.
Now, it’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and I’m sitting in my apartment, listening to the rain again, wondering when we’ll get a chance to finish the roofs. As soon as we do we can start the inside work, including framing everything out and the wiring, but until then I’m keeping myself occupied by designing our new headphone distribution system. I’ll let you know how it turns out!
As always you can catch weekly updates on our photoblog at http://strangeweatherbrooklyn.blogspot.com and you can feel free to email me with any questions you may have.
– Marc Alan Goodman
strangeweathersound [at] gmail dot com
http://strangeweatherbrooklyn.com
Marc Alan Goodman is a producer/engineer who’s worked with artists such as Jolie Holland, Marc Ribot Shudder to Think, Dub Trio, Normal Love, Alfonso Velez, Angel Deradoorian and Pink Skull.
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