VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[Jason Huggins]

***I would like to start by saying I am not an engineer, and do not claim that anyone should use this information for any purpose other than entertainment, and I am definitely not suggesting anything to anyone. Read and use this information at your own risk***

With some recent threads about suffocating in a booth, I was curious about the numbers so here is an interesting bit of info.

The average person (under normal conditions) breathes about 11,000 liters (388 cubic feet) of air per day (24-hour period). This means the average person breathes 16.2 cubic feet of air per hour (ish).

My booth is 8x6x8 (or 384 cubic feet). There is a corner cut out so that makes the number a bit different, but for calculations sake, we'll just go with that.

That means that I could (if the air was constantly stirred up and I was breathing full concentrations of air with every breath...which I know wouldn't happen in reality because the gasses are constantly seeking an equilibrium...but I digress) breathe for almost 24 hours in there WITHOUT ventilation.

A whisper room (if sealed air tight) that is 3.5x3.5x7 (measurements rounded up) would contain 98 cubic feet of air. This gives you just over 6 hours of theoretical air WITHOUT ventilation.

So, while COMFORT is a totally different discussion, you might theoretically get away with a small sealed booth without ventilation for what the majority of us do. If you plan on being in the booth for hours at a time (like stretches of 4 hours or more) a larger booth or SOME ventilation would be good to protect life. Almost any vent fan system (even a computer case fan) could supply 16.2 cubic feet of air per hour. Among the cheapest of computer fans provide 7.5 cubic feet per MINUTE (or 450 cubic feet per hour)...plenty to keep a human alive (if installed so that the room actually receives that air...meaning 2 vents would be needed to allow actual air FLOW)

Just thought I'd share

[Kristin Lennox]

What about those of us who don't plan on being in our booths for long periods of time... but our cat knocks over the room divider/dressing screen that was next to the booth while we're in it, wedging it against the door and effectively locking us inside..?

That, of course, has never happened to me. But if it DID, I'd theoretically never get to test how much air was in there, because I'd hypothetically throw all of my weight against the door until the screen splintered. Theoretically.
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[Jason Huggins]

LOL I HAD to do it all in theory...what if someone followed those numbers and they were wrong and they died and this post was found and I got sued! That really is the kind of place we live in nowadays! Can't be too careful.

But in your case...I'd say planning for that wouldn't be a bad idea. Might be a good plan to reinforce the room divider/dressing screen so that it can't be knocked over by anything under 100lbs. That way if there are 30 cats...theoretically speaking...in your room for some reason, that could never happen.

[Lee Gordon]

Just in case the cat wedges you inside your booth, you just have to make sure you have some duck tape and a little cardboard inside so you can modify the CO2 scrubbers from the LEM to work inside the booth.



By the way, my booth is just under 100 cubic feet and my exhaust fan is rated at 135 CFM, and it is sufficient to keep the fresh air flowing so I don't have to worry about suffocation, but it is somewhat disappointing in its ability (or lack thereof) to circulate conditioned air to keep the temperature inside the booth as low as the surrounding space. This may turn into a benefit come winter.
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[heyguido]

Which leads us to the age old dilemma of Schrodinger's voiceoverist....
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[Jason Huggins]

I have found my booth ventilation to be lacking in its ability to cool the booth sufficiently as well. It is supposedly 150 CFM, but I think the "muffler" box I built reduces that. It is only really an issue when it is over 85 outside for most of the day. I had a really sweaty session on one 90 degree day...but just one

[Lee Gordon]

I have two muffler boxes, one on the exhaust side that the fan is connected to, and another one on the intake side. Lately, I have been running an air conditioner at between 74-76° in the larger room inside of which the booth is located. when I step inside the booth, the temperature has been in the 79-81° range. I kill the ventilation while recording and in just the time it takes to record one or two minutes of audio, the temperature can climb to 83° but I turn the fan back on when I'm not talking.
_________________
Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[ballenberg]

Kristin: OMG! Scary!!! Only funny later, much later.

Here's one...while having my room built, I wanted to see just how airtight my builder had made it for me.I knew that if there was light leaking in, then air/sound would be also. So I went into the toom and closed the door. The good news, I saw no light,. So it was airtight. The bad news? The room ventilation had not been installed, There were no light switches or lamps in there yet, so it was pitch black and airless, I was inside and could absolutely not find the door. That was not fun at all.

Now just in case there's ever a power outage, I have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into an outlet, a flashlight under the desk, and glow tape on the doorknob. The bookings really slow down if you're dead.

To Jason's original notes/question..especially if you're male, we of the sweatier gender, it's almost impossible to put in too much ventilation. A good HVAC guy will have a CFM meter and know just what's needed. And to be sure, it's a lot more than what's needed to support life. And whatever they tell you you need, just ask for more..Actually the way my room is built, in the winter with a hot water system rather than forced air, I can leave the door slightly open and don't need to run the air handler. The room, though, is hooked into the air handler, so when the AC is on in the summer, the hotter it is outside and the harder the unit is working to cool the house, the chillier the studio gets. Think wearing hoodie in a heat wave. Ah, nice!

[Lee Gordon]

[vkuehn]

This topic of HVAC, air flow, temperature control and ventilation has been a long time side interest of mine. I remember sitting in the studio on hot summer days in a radio station in the rice country of Eastern Arkansas and sweating through extended newscasts (we turned off the window A/C unit when the mic was on.) When I moved to the city I would sometimes spend my lunch hour in the downtown main library reading "way over my head" architectural and engineering articles on the subject.

Lesson Number One: It is very hard to find an HVAC guy who really knows theory on ventilation and can discuss the topic.

At the risk of getting a decimal point in the wrong place or some other wrong turn, I breezed through Google for a few minutes to refresh some of my ancient knowledge. The more people per square foot (cubic foot?) of room and the more heat producing equipment per cubic foot, the higher the number goes for how much turns of the air you need. A good minimum is probably enough air to turn over the complete air content in your space SIX TIMES per hour. 12 times per hour would be a safer practice but that can get pretty demanding.

Lesson Number Two: The guy who installs HVAC in your home or office is likely to think that moving air through the ducts at 900 to 1200 Feet Per Minute is just peachy-keen. (Not CUBIC feet.... but like miles per hour... the linear movement of the air at maybe 1,000 feet per minute. It becomes a miniature windstorm! For years and years I have read articles that indicate for studios you would like to NEVER see the air flow faster than 200 feet per minute. (I think that is somewhere between 2 to 3 miles per hour.)

I guess I am amazed at the specs on these little computer style MUFFIN FANS. I have one here somewhere that I plan to experiment with. I have this concept that if I built a little chamber with four of them in parallel we might get enough air movement to keep a decent sized little studio fresh.

Voice of Experience: I'm in Georgia. If you haven't heard... it gets a bit warm here. My recording space is in the attic space above my garage a.k.a. in the building industry: A Bonus Room. My ceiling down each side of the room is sloped like the ceiling in a Cope Cod style house upstairs bedroom. It's hard to put enough cooling power into a room like this where there is no attic to buffer the heat load. Sun penetrates roof, less than six inches of insulation, and the sheet rock on the occupant side. Holding you hand up toward the ceiling at 4 in the afternoon is like holding your hand over the bar-b-que grill to see if the fire is still going. It might take a system with 20 complete air changes per hour to keep this space cool!

Maybe I had better come up with a design for a cluster of EIGHT muffin fans for this space.