Electrical for a jam-room

[devolved]

I little off topic of this forum, but perhaps someone here as some good advice.. or knows a good spot to point me

I have a big garage that I'm going to building a jamspot. And I'm wondering the best ways to go about running the wiring.

typical setup will be 2 guitar amps (100watt+ plus heads) a bass amp - and currently we're using two guitar amps for vocals, but at sometime in the future will get a small pa of some sort. for the cold winter days I'm going to get some kind of good powerful electric space heater. then there's going to be a couple lights.. plus some misc things like a cd player, effects pedals, etc..


I remember reading about grounding problems and how if the pa is on a different circuit than the guitar amp you can get fried... so how do I avoid that type of situation. I'm going to need at least two circuits when a heater or air conditioner gets put into the equation..

blah blah.. anywho.. any thoughts?

[RJB]

First Off.

TALK TO AN ELECTRICIAN!!!!

Ok. What is your life worth? Even if you insist on doing the work yourself. Get the advice of an electrician.

Now some thoughts to consider.

1) Garage, concrete floor? Concert holds moisture! Should be considered conductive and ground. If anyone is touching this (barefeet, kneeling in shorts, etc..) they could be in danger of a lethel shock. Have EVERY outlet setup with a GFI. This is cheap insurance.

2) Put the space heater(s)/AC on seperate circuits.

3) I would provide at least 2 seperate 20A circuits for all your gear. And lighting on it's own circuit. This way if you pop a breaker you can still see.

4) You might look into a sub panel. This would make ground/Neutral issues a little easier to deal with.

Again these are some things you could mention to an electrician.

RJB

[zionstrat]

100% agreed on electrician- Very likely you will want multiple circuits for noise and amperage issues anyway-

Also have a word of advice if you see this as a semi-permanent opportunity- Long ago one of my first bands rehearsed and recorded in a garage (keep in mind that the acoustics are going to be horrible by definition.)

But there is a relatively simple thing you can do that will help with wiring, safety and even warmth-

I don't have plans anymore but the idea is to build a very low riser (less than a foot) off the floor- If you were recording and needed to isolate the floor you could actually build a floor over the floor, but for your purposes you could consider building a number of individual units that can be pushed together-

We used this method (with slots in the top) to run snake, other cables and electricity under the 'stage'- It protected the chords, kept us from tripping, allowed easy changes of configuration, and of course, got us up off the cold, damp floor:)

Hope this helps!

[devolved]

I'm definately going to talking to an electrician.. I just figured someone here might have better ideas for the wiring configuration for a music environment. I'll probably run the wires myself, but I'll get an electrician to check it out and hook it up to the panel

here's the rough idea.. my garage is like 24x26'. one corner is going to be used for the jam room which I'll be building a room inside the garage (~12x16'). When I'm all done.. it should sound pretty dead in there and with any luck be quite proof. the walls are going to be insulated and I'm going to use resilient channel between the framed wall and the drywall. I'm most likely going to build a sub floor that won't be attached right the walls.



thanks a lot for your advice guys.

[jdtogo]

sound like your on the right track but be sure to have a electrician check it it also

[bam]

Now that's 4 times already for the word "electrician"
:lol: ;D

[GuyaGuy]

hey, guys, dontcha think it'd be a good idea to talk with an electrician? ;D

[jdtogo]

hows about a guy thats good with wire ;D