Indoor Gun Range at Your House

[giggitygiggity]

In the next few years, I am planning to buy or build a house of my own. I want to have a 25m indoor pistol range in the basement area of my house. Does anyone have a range in their house. If so, what are your recommendations? Obviously, the range, would be its own separate room and I would ensure that there is an air circulation system in order to prevent lead poisoning. Pictures, designs, and suggestions are all welcomed. Thanks!

 

[WestKentucky]

I'm looking at the same. I will be building in a few years and am starting plans.

 

[Sam1911]

Consider carefully how you'll successfully trap not only the fumes from firing, but also all the dust created by bullets impacting the backstop. And how you'll safely collect and dispose of that material.

Probably could start by talking to these guys: http://www.actiontarget.com/products

 

[thefish]

There's a few good links here:
http://www.thebuildingcodeforum.com...s/5877-indoor-shooting-range-ventilation.html

Proper ventilation and/or scrubbing will probably be the most significant cost.

The link below guestimates $340k for ventilation alone. It should give you a pretty good idea of total cost. it has a breakdown per component. They say begin with a budget of $1M. However, this article is more directed towards a commercial space.

Of course, your local building codes and neighborhood covenants, if any, will need to be adhered to.

http://www.shooting-academy.com/media/building an indoor shooting range.pdf

On a side note, if you have, or plan on raising children in the home, a separate bathroom/shower in the basement would be a good idea, possible with a separate laundry. And you probably will want the ventilation system at the least installed by a contractor. That way the EPA burden and liability does not lie on you in the event it does not perform as required.

Personally, I think enough land with the ability to do an outdoor range would be a wiser choice. You will most likely never recapture the cost of building an indoor range. Outdoor range, yes.

 

[rockhopper46038]

If I had the means, this would be awesome. As it is, a 30m outdoor range was what I could manage, and the cost was minimal.

 

[Blackrock]

Back in the 60's a friend of mine and his dad built an indoor/outdoor range when they got deep into .22 precision shooting. They built a tunnel out from their garage with a target retrieval pulley system and a snail type bullet trap at the end.

As for indoor pistol shooting a good backstop to absorb and trap the bullets plus a fan to provide ventilation should do it.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

I was thinking of an underground range built out of 8 ft sewer tiles half or 2/3's buried under ground. I would build a building at one end as the shooting spot and then a berm on the other end and a ventilation system to dump the air out. This way it would be independent from the house for safety, lead, noise and convenience.

I believe there is a description in the book "Rifle accuracy facts".

I was planning a 100 yrd range myself or going to 10/12 ft tiles and doing 200 yrds.

My goal was to put a pressure gun in it and build my own little reloading research lab during my retirement. Right now I am just working on finding my own little 640/320 acres of heaven to put it on.

 

[Ed Ames]

I'd rather have that than a bowling alley.

Unfortunately, I think unless you are in a place where you can shoot outdoors you would run afoul of muni shooting ordinances. Getting a zoning variance would be a huge and public pain. Even there you could run into state-level "no shooting within X feet of an occupied dwelling") rules being literally applied.

I once lived in a place with a long skinny basement. I used it for archery and pellet guns. Pellet guns do not have significant airborne lead exposure risks (I researched it at the time and found some research out of Germany supporting that claim). "It's better than nothing."

I think if I had the money to do an indoor range right I would probably spend it on something else. Or I would open a commercial range. No...I'd spend it on something else.

 

[hso]

You will need to ensure that you can keep that space at a lower pressure than the rest of your house by having the ventilation set up to exhaust air out at rate high enough to pull air through the room from the shooting position to the target/backstop. If you use a dedicated ventilation system you're much better off since you can then just tune it to keep 50cfm of air moving downrange and being exhausted out of your home (be sure you're exhausting far away from where your residential HVAC pulls air to circulate through your living space).

Use granulated rubber for a backstop or self healing synthetic panels so you prevent bullet splatter. A few feet thickness of granulated rubber can be put on an angled sandbag surface so the bullets are slowed and stopped in the rubber so they don't fragment. This takes a lot more space than a few vertical layers of self healing panels, but may be cheaper than panels.

Old style armor steel snail traps are expensive, heavy, and cause the lead to splatter causing a contamination issue at the target end of the range.

 

[JRH6856]

I thougt about doing this 7 years ago when I built my current house. I have a 1620cfm gable fan mounted in the wall of my garage for ventilation of fumes, and I think a 3200cfm fan would be adequate ventilation for shooting (intake behind the shooter, exhaust on same wall as target), but there is no way of getting the necessary permits and variances in an incorporated area so it would have to be a bootleg operation. The really expensive part for commercial ranges is scrubbing the exhaust air and capturing the toxins.

My house is set partially into a hillside and is built with ICF walls (6" reinforced concrete with 2.5" of styrofoam on either side), and the garage is almost all below grade which makes for a good backstop if all else fails. It is really sound absorbing so no one would hear me shoot if I did fire off a few rounds, but I limit myself to pellet guns.

 

[rbernie]

Every indoor range that I've seen has a problem with build-up of lead-impregnated dust, with this dust being largely attributed to the compounds used in modern primers. No amount of ventilation will have an impact on this dust; it's simply a shooting by-product that's produced by the ammo itself.

Most ranges that I've seen deal with this by administering a weekly hose-down of the firing line forward to the backstop/bullet traps. That means water sillcocks behind the firing line and drains up by the bullet traps. If you're going to have an indoor range, you're like to want to consider adding a similar capability.

 

[bflee]

Shoot outside and save yourself alot of headache!

 

[JRH6856]

Or try to use only lead-free primers.

 

[Sam1911]

That means water sillcocks behind the firing line and drains up by the bullet traps.

And quite probably, having a plan for disposal of lead-saturated water.

 

[JRH6856]

What do you do with the lead saturated dryer sheets or tumbling media or whatever that traps the primer residue when tumbling brass? Or for that matter, spent primers after depriming? There is probably more lead residue there than would be in an indoor home range after shooting the same number of rounds.

 

[thefish]

One more thing to consider is if you are building, or even if you buy a house and add a range, if you do not do it 100% legit, have the correct engineering done, and pull permits, you could find yourself in a world of hurt after the fact.

Just like finding a meth lab in your home, a shooting range that has not been done to code, could be classified, and thus the rest of the attached dwelling, as a contaminated and dangerous space. You could be in for very expensive abatement, and possible significant devaluation. Not to mention opening ourself up for litigation from neighbors who may or may not have been exposed to lead dust.

I have a friend who found out a renter down the block was running a meth lab in the house they were renting (the renter, not my friend). They were ordinary people, had kids, etc.

Long story short, cops, swat team, and most importantly, a team of guys in spacesuits.

The owner of the house saw the value of his rental property go from market value to land value overnight.

Of course a shooting range generates no where the toxins a meth lab does, but at the end of the day it could be the EPA stamping your deed with a "lead contaminated area" stamp.

Just for for thought.

 

[desidog]

If it's legit and approved; how would it affect your homeowners' insurance?

 

[Sam1911]

If it's legit and approved; how would it affect your homeowners' insurance?

I don't think anyone was suggesting that it would -- if it is "legit and approved."

(Though you'd really want to check with your insurance carrier FIRST. If they hear the words "lead containment/abatement" they might just run out the door screaming.)

The problem is that it is really unlikely that you'll get your indoor firing range "legit and approved" without some pretty specialized and expensive equipment to handle the bullets, lead, and fumes. A pile of sand to shoot into and a box fan in a window isn't going to get you a permitted, legal, firing range inside your house.

 

[Wishoot]

The link below guestimates $340k for ventilation alone. It should give you a pretty good idea of total cost. it has a breakdown per component.

For $340,000 you could buy yourself a huge chunk of land in the middle of nowhere and shoot to your hearts content.

 

[gym]

Aren't you glad you asked? Very few places are going to give you the OK do do this in the first place. My uncle had his basement soundproofed, and did it for 30 yrs. But he only shot 38, wad cutters and 22, and only a few times a month, maybe half a box. The house is still there he past away from the dreaded altimeters, but the wife , is still healthy, at 89 yrs old. He ducted it out with something he made himself, was a gunsmith also.

 

[buck460XVR]

One needs to address the legal and liability issues first. Then one would need to address the construction and health issues. One would also then need to compare the cost of covering those issues against the cost of their local range and decide whether the whole idea is worth the expense and bother.

When I was young, a neighbor set up a small range in their basement for shooting .22. The dad welded up a bullet trap and us kids would shoot for hours there during the winter time. That was 50 years ago and we also shot in the backyard....legally. Don't know what the heath consequences were, some of us neighbor kids are already gone....but then we used to ride our bicycles in the fog behind the truck when they fogged the town for Mosquitoes. One thing for sure, even tho the bullet trap was quite large for the 40 feet we shot at, there were still some misses and large chunks of cinder blocks blown out. Fortunately the soft lead .22 bullets did not ricochet, and no one got hurt. Things were different back then, and folks woulda just said..."oh well" if something would have happened. Not so much today.

 

[benEzra]

If this were totally a personal range in which only totally-lead-free ammunition were used, I would think (as a layperson) that the ventilation and decon requirements could be less. You still need to deal with powder residue (can be a fire hazard if it is allowed to build up) and bullet containment, and would have to vigorously police the ammo that you brought in to ensure it was lead-free.

I would think that most of the specs for commercial ranges assume that lead ammo is being used.

 

[oneounceload]

When a friend of mine had his built, he used 8' storm culvert buried underground. It was sealed for water protection, had an angled steel backstop into a sand box. It has an exhaust fan system at the far end, with a forced air supply blowing from behind him down the tunnel. He took a RC car and inverted it upside down on a roof mounted rail system - this gives him an automated target retrieval system. There are drains for JIC, and a concrete slab poured in the middle to make walking downrange easy. It is also lighted. His tunnel is 75 yards long and has a shooting bench to shoot from. His reloading area is directly behind him, making load development easy. The other end of the tunnel has an emergency escape exit for JIC

It was described on his house plans as a combination storm shelter and wine cellar

 

[Potatohead]

Park an 18 wheeler trailer out back and shoot in there. You'll wife will love it too I bet

 

[Ed Ames]

If this were totally a personal range in which only totally-lead-free ammunition were used,

Can you get lead-free primers for reloading? I don't know.

I can't see having a personal pistol range without also (first) having a progressive loading press up and running.