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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
goldeneraguy
442 posts
 
Over the week end the New York Tri State area was hit with a devastating storm.Rivers overflowed on to roads and flooded basements.Trees were uprooted and found their way on top of cars,homes and utility poles.Power was out and still is for thousands.While watching a report on TV of a man in New Jersey who was helping to evacuate people with the use of his row boat the news person asked him "Why are you doing this"
His reply was simply "Because I want to help"
At that point I said to my wife "If this happened in Texas not only would one person be trying to help but the entire community and no one would have to ask 'Why"
The good people of Texas will welcome you.Enjoy your new home and enjoy your music.
rrog
1,958 posts
 
I forgot what we were talking about.
jlupine
13 posts
 
There are several concrete construction systems available, and they should all provide much better acoustic isolation than most other designs.

http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_buildsys.asp

Jan
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
As a Texan who grew up north of San Antonio, I can tell you that one of the biggest reasons you will not find alot of houses there with basements is the limestone rock, especially in the central part of the state you are looking at. Vast amounts of it need to be dynamited out, and that is very expensive. My parents have a house that has one of the only basements in all of central Texas that we are aware of, and it was built by a builder who built it for himself, and was able to control his costs that way.

That said, San Antonio is a fun city, and there are alot of good audio dealers in the state, no worries there.
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