On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 05:22:06PM -0400, Bill Sudbrink wrote:
> Ok. Let's start a fun thread for a change. Who among us didn't
> spend some time with paper and crayon as a child designing the ideal
> "fort"? What kind of computer shop would you build given sufficient
> time/money/space?
I'm already doing it to an extent. I have a 10x20 room in the middle
of my house. It used to be a patio, and my house is C-shaped and built
with block, so that means this room had block walls on 3 sides already.
I put 4 racks across the 4th side, which fills up about half of that side.
Then I built about 4 feet of 4-inch-thick block wall, reinforced with
rebar and concrete, and then a door opening, and then 18" of 8-inch block.
Long-term I'm working on an air-powered sci-fi-style sliding steel door
(more about that at the bottom of
http://gw.kb7pwd.ampr.org/~ecloud/journal/991205.html).
The half-width block is to make room for the door to slide into when it
opens. The floor is 12" slate tile. There are cable trays hanging from
the ceiling (steel studs hanging from bailing wire work well enough;
I couldn't find anything else that more closely resembled a cable tray
at Home Depot.) There's a projector to project TV or computer video on
one of the 10' end walls (the entire wall). One rack is dedicated for
A/V stuff, one for PC's, one has a 4-track open reel tape deck and one
is mostly empty at the moment. (But the last two are not full-height
either; I need to get a matched set of full-height racks some day. I
will probably inherit my dad's eventually.) The all-block walls mean
I can crank up the sound on a movie without any of it being audible
outside the house; and they also will provide security when I get all
the steel doors done. There is the one sliding door in progress, then
I need to replace the french doors on the opposite wall with steel ones,
then build some sliding doors behind the racks. And I may end up doing
some roof work too; the adjacent roof over the next converted patio behind
this one leaks because it is too close to horizontal, and it will be
difficult to get it to slope any more without raising the roofs above both
rooms higher.
This room is not quite ideal; it could be bigger. But it has the potential
to be the most secure and soundproof. I have lots of junk spread
throughout the rest of the house anyway. I'm not married so can get
away with that. Also if I was building from scratch, I think I would
do the raised-floor thing. Maybe use aluminum diamondplate squares.
(or not... I do walk around barefoot in there a lot)
It would also let me do more of the sci-fi decorating, like maybe some
backlit glass-block sections at the doorways, or something like that.
In this house the floors are concrete and all at the same height, so
I'd rather keep it that way rather than having to step up into the
computer room.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud_at_bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd_at_kb7pwd.ampr.org
__) | | \________________________________________________________________
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Received on Wed Jun 28 2000 - 17:26:36 BST