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Building a listening room in new house; Texas?

Contemplaitng either Sierra Vista, AZ or San Antonio, TX for new home build in the next few years. From my initial research, Texas has what they called a Texas basement, not really a full basement and maybe something called a FROG. This is because the earth settles a lot there from what I have read. That probably means a listening room above ground (God help my wife), or in AZ; we can have a basement and all issues would be gone.

For both our careers, it looks like TX for now, so with that information, I looked into new home construction options in TX. Can you build an entire above ground home that is concrete, cement or brick? I know that we would like radiant floor heat (we are coming from Europe), and my current listening room is in a bomb shelter for a basement, literally, we designed the house around my listening room with almost 3 foot thick basement walls, and double insulation within that, so that I can blast away with music all night long and the wife could sleep in peace. I am not seeing any options like that in Texas. Would a general contractor be good for this or do I really need to take the bull by the horns and sub myself to get what I want?

Having built a house in Germany and getting the specs we wanted was a great experience. I would love to bring the basement with me, ha. I will need the essential listening room size at least 19x26 with at least 8 foot ceilings. The walls will have to be inert enought to absrob the sound of me blasting 2 15" subs, massive mono tube amps and N800 speakers. I will also need a sound proof door as I have now. What is great right now, is that my ceiling is concrete, and is about 20 inches thick, because it is both the roof of the basement and it incorporates floor heat. Total house size, about 3500-4500 square feet, with 3 car garage.

I saw someone posted a while back about celluose insulation, looks promising.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas, I would be glad to hear from you. You know longterm planning is better than waiting until the last minute.
Thanks in advance.
Ciao,
Audioquest4life
audioquest4life

Showing 1 response by macdadtexas

macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
Welcome to Texas, San Antonio is a great city, and you will love it. Since you already speak English and German, mix in some Spanish and you will love it even more. There is a huge historically German population in the hill country north and east of San Antonio, so you will feel at home.

One word of non-Audio related advice. The last thing on earth you need in San Antonio is radiant floor heat. You are roughly the same latitude as Cairo in San Antonio, and the weather, while drier, is not that different, very mild winters, extremely hot and long summers. Make sure the house is well insulated, and the heating unit that is integral to your AC unit for forced air will be fine.

Good luck.
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