What the heck did the home builders do to my room?! (part 1 of 2)

Part 14 — Designing and building a DIY home recording studio.

9 min readMay 8, 2019

The whole story — part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21

Seriously?! One of the trades (HVAC or electrical) was VERY lazy when the home was originally being built and ran their pipes and wiring below the joists, far enough from the HVAC trunks that this is an issue for me. Just because the original home owner didn’t have the basement finished, it’s not license to just put stuff wherever. Once one person got lazy, the other guys must have used it as a green light to do the same thing with their install. Now I get to pay in both money and time to have it undone and then redone correctly. In a humorous moment of weakness, I had a fleeting thought that I could possibly get the home builder to reimburse me for the costs I’m going to have to pay to correct everything. Hahahaha,…..haha…..hahahaha (cry). This makes me sick to think about the money and time I have to spend to just correct something, that instead could be spent to buy something like an awesome pair of solid core studio doors, or double glazed windows, or insulation or flooring etc.

The scope of this build just completely changed

So, I have to quickly admit something. When we bought this home a year ago, somehow, in my sheer excitement of having the space to finally build a real studio for my composing, sound design, and immersive audio projects, I sort of thought that besides moving the load bearing wall to open up the room, I would just make a few quick adjustments; frame an inner wall (for room-in-room soundproofing), install hat channel to float the ceiling and it would be ready to finish.

Besides being COMPLETELY wrong about all that (I’ll explain), I also glossed over and downplayed several critical considerations which would ultimately demand countless hours — spanning many months — of sweat, literal blood, physical exhaustion, several pulled muscles, sheer panic from time to time and occasional momentary despair, but then finally, a glowing light at the end of the tunnel, and ultimately — VICTORY!

Clearing out the joists to make room for the drywall and prepping the subfloor became one of the most drawn out, labor intensive, never-ending parts of this entire project!

The majority of my time prepping the ceiling for soundproofing was spent standing on a ladder reaching up precariously into the joists with a Sawzall reciprocating saw above my head trimming dozens, upon dozens of nails — that were supposed to hold the subfloor down against the joists, but came through the subfloor missing the joists. I was amazed how many had actually missed the joists and had to be trimmed. Maybe the joists weren’t the only target. Who knows.

Some of the nails I had to trim were from fire blocking that had to be moved.

Nice! Now I can install the layers of drywall without issue.

The only reason why I’m trimming them is because I have to mass-load the subfloor (of the master bedroom above me), to reduce foot fall impact noise from above. This is done by installing a couple of layers of 5/8" drywall (with green glue in between), to the bottom of the subfloor.

I’ll see if I have enough budget for double layers of drywall and green glue on both layers for mass-loading the subfloor above the studio. If I do, it will nicely help quiet down the sound of people walking around in the room above me. Almost more importantly, it will also help reduce the amount of low energy sound that the subfloor would normally transfer upstairs.

Step 1 turns into — Step “!”

So, before I can do anything with installing drywall/green glue on the subfloor, I need to address the big mess of furnace ventilation conduit, pressurized air conditioner refrigerant line, green service panel ground wire and random electrical wires, all running below the joists. As it stands, I already have to build a soffit/fur down/box around the two large central air supply and air return trunks at the back of the room. This is taking away ceiling height visually as well as changing the cubic feet available in the room — that I used to determine the modes/nodes of the room (I talk about it here). So, anything that changes the cubic feet available in the room starts to mess me up a bit. Plus, who wants to have big boxes dropping down from the ceiling to cover up stuff that didn’t need to be there.

What really frustrates me, is EVERYTHING could have continued running up inside the joists if the people installing it treated the situation like it was there own home. Instead, they blasted through the install as quickly as humanly possible, taking the absolute easiest paths possible.

Bottom line, the electricians and HVAC guys knew the basement wasn’t being finished so they severely shortcutted the quality of their install. There are several examples throughout the rest of the basement — which we are working on concurrently — that I won’t drag you through. Suffice it to say, WHAT THE HECK??!!

Moving forward

I have to remove and redirect the furnace flue conduits. By the way, high efficiency furnaces use both an intake and exhaust conduit which is why there are two. These are 2 inch PVC pipes. While speaking with one of the HVAC professionals about our basement, I asked what he would recommend I do with these pipes. He said we could easily (and more appropriately), do a 90° turn just before they get to the room and then simply direct them up in the joist and run them out the back of the house.

Looking into the do’s and don’ts of how and where to run flues, I discovered that where these were installed SHOULD NOT have passed initial home build inspection AND the home inspection before we bought the home, because exhaust gasses were exiting directly above the window. They are supposed to be at least 6 feet away from an air intake or window to prevent people from dying.

WHAT….THE…..HECK!!!???

Are you seeing the pattern here??

New Flue

So, all I can say is, the more I tried to wash this expanding foam off my fingers, the worse it started to stick. I tried all three types of GOOF-OFF I have and not even a hint that this stuff was going to come off. I finally read the back of the can on how to remove it. The answer is to allow it to “wear off”. My hands looked like this for about 4 days. The large print on the top of the can to “ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES” is wonderful advice when using this stuff. =-)

Knowing almost nothing about HVAC (but learning quickly), I cut the two PVC pipes, measured and installed the new lines running to and out the back of the house with everything according to code — with at least (often more than),the required 1/4 inch per foot of slope to prevent condensation from becoming standing water in the line. It took a couple days to figure this all out and complete, but it’s done. So far, so good!

…And then this happened

ok, I’m pulling you slightly into the future for a moment.

As it turns out, I was given the wrong conduit size information by two HVAC professionals who came to look at our system before I made the changes to it.

Apparently, in order for the furnace to release enough exhaust fast enough to not overheat internally (when it has to run constantly for extended periods of time, during below freezing weather), we have to have 3" conduit. Not 2". We didn’t know that for several weeks into the winter though because it seemed to be working fine.

This winter had an unusual cold snap and dropped below freezing for several days. When the temperature dropped the furnace started to short-cycle. It would ignite, run for about 4–10 seconds, and then shut down and start the cycle over. This got a little scary after about 2 days of that because we weren’t getting any real heat and it’ only s a 2-1/2 yr old furnace. I thought I did something to break it.

The furnace gave us an error code (by means of a blinking light) which pointed me to an igniter sensor that I learned I could take out and clean with steel wool. And if that didn’t fix it, it was time to call a pro.

I cleaned the part and no-go. We called a pro. He said the flue conduit for this home was supposed to be 3 inch for proper air flow for the length of the run in order for the furnace to work properly and not overheat during freezing temperatures . 2" just will not work.

(what??)

So, let me get this straight, our furnace was installed with the wrong size conduit? Well, actually, it was the right size conduit for the length of the run that was breaking code while installed over the window.

If the installers had installed it to code originally, it would have been run out of the home somewhere else (most likely the back of the house where it is now),which would have demanded a 3 inch conduit because of the length of the run. As it stands we are just about 8' too long for 2" conduit to work.

Now I’m fuming

With no alternatives (or hope for reimbursement), I run to the hardware store and buy 3“ conduit. We very carefully take down only what we have to of the ceiling drywall in the main basement area, and begin cutting out the newly installed 2 “ conduit. With each cut I seemed to get more and more frustrated. 8 hours later, the 3 inch conduit is installed (to code). With all my fingers crossed I turned on the furnace. It fired right up and hasn’t had a hiccup since.

Painfully pulling down ceiling drywall so we can access the newly installed 2" conduit that has to come back out and be replaced by 3".

New 3" conduit is fully installed and the furnace is instantly working! No more short-cycling killing our furnace. We have heat again!

My fingers and my brain are frozen, so I’m just dry fitting the elbows for now and will trim them tomorrow. I had to have some fun though so I told my wife that this is how we would have to keep the pipes in the back so the furnace could work properly. She wasn’t amused.

The 3" intake/exhaust is all trimmed up, glued, up to code and working great. I’m going to ask my brother to 3D print a cover for me to help make it look nice and cover up the ugly sun stained foam. And we just planted a lilac bush too which will hide the pipes during spring/summer.

What a miracle to have discovered this issue BEFORE mud, tape and texture and paint! I kept imagining what it would have been like to have finished the basement, only to discover next year that we had to now cut open the ceiling and replace the conduit at that point. (dodged a big bullet there!)

I keep thinking though, I would have been nice if we could have known this before going through all the effort and time and expense installing new 2 inch pipe first. It’s frustrating when professionals (two of them), don’t provide the right info. Oh, well. It’s fixed now and all's well that ends well, and it DID end well.