Circle Studios Birmingham - studio build/refurb

[Trev@Circle]

no pics due to a day of admin but skip ordered, plans printed, glass researched, website optimization optimised, email addresses registered and configured, gearslutz pored over, empty boxes moved to storage space, paint bought, stuff bought long ago for this moment found, emails, calls, blahblahblah.

Man its amazing how much time you can spend doing not very much!

[Northward]

Originally Posted by Trev@Circle

In other news, the regufoam for floating the floors arrived and was cut into shape:

Ah, the sweet smell of REGUFOAM. Good to see it arrived as planned!

[Trev@Circle]

Thanks Thomas! We're hoping the steel will arrive today!

[Trev@Circle]

Forgot to take pictures today (sorry!) but in short, I spent the last couple of days filling a large skip, mainly with the room divider panels from the new unit. Filled it pretty much level with the top. Then the driver came to pick it up:

"Er, you'll have to take the plasterboard out mate"

Me: "Eh?"

Driver: "We can't have plasterboard in these skips. They aren't plasterboard skips"

Me: " WTF?!? You are having a laugh."

Driver: "No mate. No plasterboard in these skips"

Me: "Why did nobody mention this when I ordered the skip?"

Driver: "It says clearly on our website: 'no plasterboard in skips'"

Me: "I didn't go on your website. I just got your number from yell and called"

Driver: "Well you should have read the website first"

Me: "Grrrrrrr"

Driver: "So do you want me to wait around while you take the plasterboard out?"

Me: "If I take the plasterboard out it'll be empty"

Driver: "Well I can't take it away full of plasterboard"

Me: "Well you taking away an empty skip isn't much use to me anyway. How do I get rid of the plasterboard"

Driver: "You could call and order a plasterboard skip"

Me: "Who from?"

Driver: "We do them. Just call the office"

Me:

[andyspiller]

Twats of the World #343 - Trev it must be a nightmare!

[bassjam]

Empty the skip, order a wagon of C50 concrete, fill the empty skip with concrete, when it's gone solid phone the skip company to come collect it.

[Analogue Kid]

Or

Find out where the driver lives, ring me up and I'll get a mate of mine round with an 8 wheeler and 8m drum filled with C50 with Fibers.. open up down stair's lounge window and empty drum onto carpet..

One big mess for the skip dude to deal with....

Yes this has been known to happen ............. on occasion ;-)

When somebody hasn't paid the piper...............

Andy

Originally Posted by bassjam

Empty the skip, order a wagon of C50 concrete, fill the empty skip with concrete, when it's gone solid phone the skip company to come collect it.

[Trev@Circle]

Originally Posted by andyspiller

Twats of the World #343 - Trev it must be a nightmare!

He. All part of life's rich tapestry Andy!

Originally Posted by bassjam

Empty the skip, order a wagon of C50 concrete, fill the empty skip with concrete, when it's gone solid phone the skip company to come collect it.

doh! Just spat tea all over my keyboard!

Originally Posted by Analogue Kid

Or

Find out where the driver lives, ring me up and I'll get a mate of mine round with an 8 wheeler and 8m drum filled with C50 with Fibers.. open up down stair's lounge window and empty drum onto carpet..

One big mess for the skip dude to deal with....

Yes this has been known to happen ............. on occasion ;-)

When somebody hasn't paid the piper...............

Andy

Harhar. I'm a reformed character nowadays!

[emearg_s]

Oh there B**** they not take out these days oil based Paint tin's / tube lighting is huge No no

Don't know if this helps but abut 1/2 the price of skip is the waste transfer paperwork
So if you get 8 yard (normal skip skip size ) its around £140
or 20 yard one is only £180 (if you got the space to keep it)

And If you got lots of stuff they sometime do deal if you pre-order 10 at time for set price each time or if you sort it wood/plaster board May not sound a lot but 20 - or 30 skips on job mount up cost wise and every penny helps for the good stuff

Oh we used to have deal on one job with British gypsum that they use to pic up 1 ton bags of cutting when they dropped of load of new boards (not sure you be big enough for that but its worth few phone calls) we buy full 40 ton lorry loaded at time and they take the bits away to remake new boards

Sorry if you know all this already but may be of use to others

PS Floor screed much more fun its self levelling and like water but set Rock hard lol

[Trev@Circle]

And finally phase two begins in earnest... so here's the first in a series of pictures about this week's activity. First of all, the steel arrived:



And then the builders did. Happily they got right down to the job at hand pulling out the old office space and unibonding the concrete to keep the dust down. Once that was done they started marking the rooms onto the concrete floor and laying out:

[Trev@Circle]

In this photo you can see that wooden benches are being constructed on top of the regufoam to carry the structure of the floated concrete floors:

[Syncamorea]

Originally Posted by Trev@Circle

In this photo you can see that wooden benches are being constructed on top of the regufoam to carry the structure of the floated concrete floors:

I love the phrase "floated concrete". Looking great! Good luck getting this phase completed on time, on budget and with minimal stress.

[Trev@Circle]

Originally Posted by Syncamorea

I love the phrase "floated concrete". Looking great! Good luck getting this phase completed on time, on budget and with minimal stress.

Haha! Yes. Sounds a bit odd doesn't it!

I think there's little chance on any of those three but I live in hope!

[Trev@Circle]

Today's update then. The regufoam and benches are now in place for studio 3 and 4 and the steelwork is being formed for studio 4:

[Trev@Circle]

Good news and bad news today.

On the good news first... the steelwork is done for all of the productions rooms (yay!):



The bad news (booo)? Somewhere between a communication error and a complete clusterfvck something went badly wrong. When I went down today the floors were as you see them above but there was a large quantity of regufoam left. It soon became evident that the benches have not been implemented properly. In the circumstances, the metalwork all needs to be lifted up again. It looks unlikely at this point that we'll be pouring concrete on Monday as per the original plan... Keep watching for the next episode of... soap.

[and you know]

I hope you are knocking some heads together.

[Steve Honest]

Glad your finally underway mate,
and so sorry to hear about this setback, but s i learned very early on in the studio building caper, you have to be in there everyday and be a pest, make sure they are following the plans , its a pain
hope they pull there finger out and make up the time for you
steve

[Trev@Circle]

Thanks guys! They say you should not judge people by how they deal with you when things are going right, but rather what they do to sort things out when things go wrong. Fair play to them, builders have been in all weekend put matters right. This involved them lifting up each bay in turn and relaying it correctly. This was complicated by the fact that each of the layers was bonded together.



So the good news is that we are back on to pour concrete early this week. Benches and metalwork for control room floor is going down tomorrow and we are hoping to pour by Wednesday at the latest. Thomas flies in tomorrow to check the work prior to the pour (as there ain't much we can do once the floor pans are full of concrete!)

[Trev@Circle]

More progress today then. The control room floor caught up with the rest of the build:



and concrete arrives at 10am tomorrow. Whoop!

[Trev@Circle]

A long day for the builders yesterday then. When Thomas arrived to let them in at 7:30am they were already standing waiting. They didnt leave for about 12 hours.

First they finalised the metalwork:



and then the pour began:



The lads worked hard all day, barrowing concrete to the far room until eventually:



Work then started on the control room:



Almost there:



and finally:



Done.

[emearg_s]

I understand if you or thomas can't tell explain much about how the bench system works after all have to make living but I like to ask few questions ? If its posable for you to answer them thanks G

1) Do they work like large weight speaker de-cuplers If so is the mass not so great they never move with out loads of energy there has to min 1 ton just in the slab

2) Is the ply/sterling board just to spread the corrugated of the hollow rib (or what ever brand steel pre form shutter) evenly on to the regufoam And why do you bond ?

[emearg_s]

Opss double posted

[TapeOpAl]

Originally Posted by Trev@Circle

Thanks guys! They say you should not judge people by how they deal with you when things are going right, but rather what they do to sort things out when things go wrong.

This is the basis that I always work on, shit happens as they say but what happens when it does...

Looks like it's moving on anyway.

[Northward]

Originally Posted by emearg_s

I understand if you or thomas can't tell explain much about how the bench system works after all have to make living but I like to ask few questions ? If its posable for you to answer them thanks G

1) Do they work like large weight speaker de-cuplers If so is the mass not so great they never move with out loads of energy there has to min 1 ton just in the slab

2) Is the ply/sterling board just to spread the corrugated of the hollow rib (or what ever brand steel pre form shutter) evenly on to the regufoam And why do you bond ?

Hey,

Not sure I understand your questions properly, but I'll try and answer them.

1- Speaker decoupling the way we do it doesn't work like the floors. It's the same laws of physics but because speakers often don't weight that much the design is completely different, but with the same goal in mind.

We only decouple in-wall mains though. Decoupling nearfields is rather useless. For these we just recommend good stands and common sense.

With main speakers we use extra "dummy loads" or "virtual loads" so we get the decoupling devices to their ideal load, usually systems that in fact need a lot of load/pressure so they are very 'rigid' once installed.

The concrete floors being very heavy by nature, especially under the area (perimeter) that is also loaded by the walls and the ceiling, the calculation there is one that uses a redistribution of the loads on benches of different size so that the system is near it's ideal load at any point. There are many densities of REGUFOAM (or SYLOMER) and we chose the type accordingly.

Here the pressure is of around 0.050N/mm² which is equivalent to 50kN/m², so ~5 Tons per m². Frequency is estimated at 7Hz under normal use of the rooms.

Floating a bunker is by far the is the easiest part of a Studio design.

2- Yes, it is to prevent uneven loading. The use of the steel decks to try and limit the weight of the floors while making sure it remains very stiff which is important (REGUFOAM is very expensive, and the higher the density, the higher the price). It also allows for a good ventilation of the floor which is extremely important.

We bond because as long as the steel deck is not properly installed on top and there is movement on the construction site, there is a constant risk of workers kicking the bench and moving it. So the contractor simply uses a (specific) glue or industrial double sided tape to maintain the bench together while they set the steel deck in place. It's really only a practical aspect. Once the concrete is poured, it's obvious the REGUFOAM isn't going anywhere.

Hope this answers your question!

[emearg_s]

Thanks very much for Your answer it made a lot of sense I really appreciate you taken the time to reply And I have learn something today

[Trev@Circle]

More for your interest today then... setting out work begins for the three rooms in the new building:

[andyspiller]

Hi Trev - so you put the microwave in the kitchen on Self-Destruct mode to dry the concrete a bit quicker :-)

Glad to see it zooming along now. Can't wait for the photos of the !@£$%^&^%$&^%

[Trev@Circle]

Hahah! Thanks Andy! Me too!

[Trev@Circle]

Day 2 of the build saw the layout of all three of the rooms in the new building get finalised:



And bringing you right up to date this afternoon, day 3 of the build sees studio 5 start to look like a room rather than one of the ruins at Pompeii:





I had a little bit of a flap this afternoon over the apparent dimensions of the doors - the gaps being left looked way too big - but after a panicked call to Thomas and some reassuring words from him I climbed back in my box again [Thanks Thomas!]

As an aside, I gotta say I've been well impressed with the contractors over the last fortnight. Great attention to detail and they just put their heads down and get on and do it. And a nice bunch of lads too. :thumbsup:

[Trev@Circle]

Not sure I ever posted a link to our facebook like page: Circle (Recording) Studios, Birmingham | Facebook

Fill yer boots ;-)