New Office Ideas?

E

Engine101

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Jul 30, 2004
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I'm building a new "man cave"/office in my basement and am looking for ideas. I'm building this room ground up, so everything is a possibility.

So far, i'm doing some obvious and some new/unique things;

-Many electrical outlets around the room. Entire room will be on it's own circuit.
-Engineered wood floor, dark (reducing static electricity)
-LED lights bulbs(recessed), via Philips, dimmable,cool, and efficient
-Exhaust system for the PC's. I'm either going to capture and recycle this around the water heater or just vent it outside or into the void behind the walls. I'm planning on using flexible ducting for this and would have venting holes into the walls. Obviously i can't capture all of it, but i think i can get most of the PSU/GPU/CPU exhaust
-Plenty of tabletop space for building/testing equipment as well as general computing/gaming area
-Plenty of stoarge for parts/pieces/cables


What would you do if you could build from scratch, with a modest budget?
 
If your in the basement, Im feeling no need for the exhaust. Basements even heated ones tend to stay on cool side, due to where is at/built. I say save your money there and invest in another area of the project.

I would make some of the outlets mid wall for TVs, and Monitors, so you dont have to later feed them behind wall.

The Ehardfloor is nice thing, sister just put it in her house and looks great. Presonally I would do a nice sandy tile, make things even cooler too.

Also surround sound, feeding wires behind the wall with a den in the wall to put receiver/DVD player, etc.

By the sounds of it, your heading in the right direction to a good looking office. If I come up with ideas Ill report back. Good luck.
 
Might want to do a polished concrete floor if there's so much as a chance of flooding. Probably cheaper than hardwood and very durable. Easier maintenance too.

Don't exhaust into the walls. Adding air pressure inside the walls can dislodge drywall tape, etc. I agree with FRAGizm, the basement is one big heatsink.

Conduit in the walls for low voltage wiring. Makes it easy to retrofit fiber optic cable, etc when it eventually becomes a realistic option. Maybe a structured media panel for your router, etc big enough to run all your cable to if you ever rewire the entire house. Put in a raceway to the above floor now?

You can find a whole bunch of free wiring training videos here:
http://www.techtoolsupply.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=43
And a not free tutorial DVD:
http://www.techtoolsupply.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1425
 
Great ideas guys, keep them coming! I'm not that creative

*Wall Venting - hmm, i see where you all going. Didn't think about the air pressure. I was thinking more along the lines of keeping my office cool, while at the same time helping to keep the void space dry, as it's tends to be a little damp, not wet, just damp.

*Whole room fan - i have central air, the office has one vent. There is a central filter as well as register filters, so i pretty much have that covered. But i see where you're going with that.

*Mid Wall Outlets - i'll def do that on one wall where i plan to have a TV mounted.

*Pre-Wired Surround sound - Thought about it, and am still considering it. I'm not totally set on the layout of the room, so it's hard to say if it will make sense.

*Floor - Polished concrete is still a consideration for the office. The floor is OLD (60+ years) and are pretty stained. I'm not sure how much of that will come out or how well the new stain will cover it. It would help to keep the office cool though, which i prefer (heigthened senses for gaming;-)

*Conduit - I like the idea, but there will be a lot of space between the studs and the foundation, which will allow for easy future runs. I'm am putting this in the new familyroom/theater though, from the AV closet to the wall mount for the TV. I also already put one in going UP to each floor above.

*Structure Media Panel - already in ;-) I'm using a wall mounted rack right now for switch/router/wire patch panel.
 
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