Advice on small room conversion project (1 Viewer)

I have a small workshop off of my garage. It's probably 10' x 15'...the door to the workshop is inside the garage, no windows, not heated and cooled. Currently, it is used for tools, storage for various outdoor crap, Christmas lights, etc. I would really like to clean it out and used it for a little music room where I could play guitar, record, etc. Nothing fancy, no high-priced equipment out there.

The one obstacle is that the room isn't heated or cooled. I need ideas on how to get around that. I don't have a window. The exterior of the house is brick. The house is on a crawlspace, but this particular section of the house/garage is on a slab. On the other side of the wall, there is a laundry room with a floor vent, so that's the closest that the ducts get to the storage room.

What are my options? Portable AC/heater? extend the ductwork into the storage room? Looking for the lowest cost/least amount of construction option.

TIA.

What is the climate where you live? Meaning, how cold or how hot do we have to account for?

ChiefD said:

What is the climate where you live? Meaning, how cold or how hot do we have to account for?

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Live in the humid south. Summertime gets above 100F; winter doesn't get colder than about 30F typically.

Acoustic or electric guitar? Humidity is your biggest issue, but you probably know that already.

Window unit should be fine, no?

Tiger Fan said:

Window unit should be fine, no?

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Except that there are no windows, and that noise will mess with the recordings.

Ratbert said:

Tiger Fan said:

Window unit should be fine, no?

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Except that there are no windows, and that noise will mess with the recordings.

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You can bust out the bricks to make a "window". The noise issue is valid

You can use electric radiant heat for the winter for a room that size. Not sure what to suggest about the summer.

What about one of those Mitsubishi ductless single room units?

If you have forced air heating/cooling, you could run a supply & return duct to the room.

mr roboto said:

What about one of those Mitsubishi ductless single room units?

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http://m.homedepot.com/p/GREE-High-Efficiency-9-000-BTU-3-4-Ton-Ductless-Mini-Split-Air-Conditioner-with-Heat-Inverter-and-Remote-115V-60Hz-RIO09HP115V1A/205825733/

snore said:

mr roboto said:

What about one of those Mitsubishi ductless single room units?

Click to expand...

http://m.homedepot.com/p/GREE-High-Efficiency-9-000-BTU-3-4-Ton-Ductless-Mini-Split-Air-Conditioner-with-Heat-Inverter-and-Remote-115V-60Hz-RIO09HP115V1A/205825733/

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Yeah, something like this would be perfect. Just need to run power for it, and you can bore the refrigerant line through the brick wall and put the outdoor unit right there. These are pretty quiet also. The heat pump will give him plenty of heat for those temps in the winter.

ChiefD said:

snore said:

mr roboto said:

What about one of those Mitsubishi ductless single room units?

Click to expand...

http://m.homedepot.com/p/GREE-High-Efficiency-9-000-BTU-3-4-Ton-Ductless-Mini-Split-Air-Conditioner-with-Heat-Inverter-and-Remote-115V-60Hz-RIO09HP115V1A/205825733/

Click to expand...

Yeah, something like this would be perfect. Just need to run power for it, and you can bore the refrigerant line through the brick wall and put the outdoor unit right there. These are pretty quiet also. The heat pump will give him plenty of heat for those temps in the winter.

Click to expand...

We've got these in our house and they work fine (Okinawa is hot and humid too).

Can't you bust out (or have professionally busted out) some of those bricks to make for a window A/C unit?

The portable units don't work, really. I tried one in my grow room and it immediately became apparent why... the air coming directly out the front of the a/c was only "kinda-cool" to begin with... the air coming out the exhaust at the unit's mouth was definitely heated. Connect the hose (came with 5' length).... guess what happens... expand that hose out the full 5' to 6'. Then feel how warm the air is coming out the other end.... pretty much room temperature at the exhaust end of the hose. Hypothesis: all that heat that was taken out by the a/c gets radiated back into the room via that damned hose.... the shorter the hose, the better.... and a window a/c with no hose at all is best.

All you need for the winter is an electric space heater, I would think.

Going from the laundry room seems to make the most sense. No brick wall to go thru, just some drywall and insulation. If you want to run from your existing unit, you will need both a supply and a return duct. Maybe run the return to the ceiling and the supply line on the laundry room wall. But you may first want to check out if your existing AC unit is sized correctly to handle the additional space. It will involve cutting out a good portion of the drywall in the laudry room wall and will probably require some holes in the laudry room floor to get the ducts into the wall. This assumes there is some space in the laudry room you can steal.