Planning The Shack
November/December 1998
After moving into the house we quickly realized we had a problem - with three bedrooms and two daughters, we had no guestroom! There was room off to the side of the house for an addition, so the planning started in earnest.
We decided on a 20x28' addition roughly split into two 20x14 spaces - one for the guestroom and one for me! After going through lots of graph paper and many good suggestions from TowerTalkians, I settled on a plan.
I have always tried to organize my shack in previous houses so it was easy to get at all the wiring behind the rigs. I also wanted to integrate my computer more conveniently, but I tired of climbing on the bench or losing floor space. I also wanted an inconspicuous place for all the cabling to come up from underneath the house, etc.
In the plan above, I've split the room into two parts - the office/shack itself is about 14' square, and the wiring closet at the end is about 10x5 or so. There is a hole in the floor where all the cables come up from under the house, and there is a 100A panel in there too. I planned on lots of 110 outlets, a 30A 220, all three phone lines, and some 10baseT. The really neat thing about the closet is the pass-through to the shack. I plan to build shelving on the operating bench that back up to the passthrough so I can go inside the closet to get at the back of all the gear.
January, 1999
Having selected a builder and given him the go-ahead, I had some work to do before the foundation was laid. Our house is on a crawl-space and the addition will be also. I wanted a conduit buried from the tower to come up under the new addition.
I rented a trencher again to run a 4" PVC from the tower to the spot where our new addition is going to be. There is about 130' of PVC with 45 degree elbows just before it breaks the ground. As I lay the pipe I thread some rope (twice as long as the pipe run).
The next day the diggers come and dig out the footing. Once inspected, they pour the footing right around my tower pipe. The foundation bricks go in with the pipe sticking up inside - slick!
February, 1999
With the addition complete, I run the cables through the pipe by pulling it through with the rope. Since the rope is twice as long as the run, enough is left at the other end that I can pull it back through.
March, 1999
The surge suppressors are finally mounted and the shack is ready. Time to fire up the rig for WPX! This beam is amazing - I work stations I could never even hear before. A 4X comes right back to my first call with "Whoa, N8WRL - sounds like the BBC here!" Barefoot!
I'll add more details on my shack soon. I'm very pleased with it - I have a 16x14 room with a wiring closet behind it where the radios are accessable through a hole in the wall. All the cables come up from under the house (crawspace) through a pipe in the floor. The closet has its own 100A panel and there is a 220V 30A outlet, just in case I get 'shoes' some day.
More later...