Massachusetts 1-room basement project studio/office

Hello All, I'm building a home project studio/office in my basement in Massachusetts. The house is on a steep grade, so the front basement walls are below grade and the back is a walk-out (the walk-out doors are not in the studio room). Pictures being worth a thousand words - here's a look: (more to come next post)

Here's a look at what I think the final layout will be. The front of the house is the bottom of the drawing. The wall on the left of the drawing is the only construction already in place. That wall was built with a 6" sill and offset studs so the inside and outside are disconnected (except at top and bottom). Sound board was used under the blueboard and plaster. The door is not "soundproof", but was special ordered for its low sound transmission properties. The adjoining room is a semi-finished rec room area. During recording the adjoining room will not be occupied, but upstairs (main level) will be, so I will be concerned mostly about sound coming from the ceiling.

The dimensions I've chosen come from a "prefered" dimension listing in ModeCalc. They are 1:1.50:2.10 In order to achieve a "prefered" ratio, the front (bottom of drawing) wall eats up a lot of space. But with the huge hunk of below-grade concrete, I'm hoping it will make a perfect area to keep computers cool. OK, here's my first set of questions: 1) General impressions? - Does it look like I'm on the right track? 2) I will be using Dri-Core on the floor. I can put the Dricore down first and build the walls on top of it (easiest and doesn't require pressure-treated for base plates), or I can put the walls in first and pit the Dri-Core in after the walls are done. I think I prefer the former because the Dri-Core will be attched to rigid walls instead of just laying on the concrete; However, it also means the walls will all connect via the Dri-Core instead of each being anchored directly to concrete. Which is better? 3) I have seen recomendations for hard floor and absorptive cieling especially if acoustic instrument will be recorded in the space. This has led me to consider using a below-grade compatible laminate floor (e.g. Pergo) instead of carpet. Is this the way to go? That's it for now -- more to come soon. Thanks!

Dolphran - welcome to the site and hello from the neighborhood. The first thing a mod will comment on this thread is the image size. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7572 I'm not an expert in this field. I've been working on a similar basement room as yours (mine is entirely below grade though) and I have a moderate amount of experience with home remodelling. On the baseplate/dricore thing - Reference their FAQ

list. Stud walls can be set right on top of your new DRIcore subfloor. Install your 2X4 walls directly on top of the DRIcore panels, measuring for a “snug” fit between the panels and ceiling. Once the walls are framed and in position, simply screw the bottom plates of the 2X4 wall to the DRIcore panels, using 2" wood screws. To finish the anchoring process, we suggest pinning the bottom plate to the concrete floor using either 3" concrete nails or self-tapping concrete fasteners. Only minimal fastening to the concrete is required. For example, on an 8 foot length of wall, you would require only 2 fastening points (one at both ends). Again, only minimal fastening to concrete is required. Too many fastening points breaking through the polyethylene moisture barrier may defeat the moisture resistant benefit of the DRIcore subfloor system. NOTE: If you are planning to use metal studs in place of wood, the base track for the studs should be affixed to the DRIcore panels with wood screws. Metal stud base plates should be anchored to panels every 2’ when installing over DRIcore panels. As above, 2 fasteners should penetrate the panel and go into concrete, securing the wall into place.

Personally I'd prefer to use pressure treated plates. I have doubts about the weight capacity of the wafer board and moisture barrier these are constructed with. Remember - with sound isolation construction, we are putting a bit more mass on the wall and ceiling assemblies. If your concrete is not level - and I mean .5 or .25'' of variance you'd be dealing with pressure points under those heavy walls. And in the spots where you do nail through to keep the wall from kicking out or in - if moisture gets through by wicking or flooding through, you're compromising crappy lumber around this point. whatever wafer board those things are made from. Other weight factors - Your concern is with noise travelling up above? If you go the route of an independantly framed ceiling, you'll be adding MORE weight to your wall. Your best and most direct resource is Rod's book on amazon. Search for "Rod Gervais" and you'll find it. It's a perminent fixture next to the hopper in our place (sorry rod - it's a place I routinely read things...) right next to the Sports Illustrated Red Sox World Series Champions 2004 commemorative edition... But I digress. Other Thoughts Your all covered up with plastic there with the existing framework. If you're concerned with noise to and from the above space, think of these: Please indicate what the first floor is constructed with. What thickness of subfloor and what is the finished floor above. What are the joists made from? That center beam? You'll need to box that in as well. Are you dealing with a support column? Utility piping & wiring? Does it run perpendicular to the floor joists? Do you need to be able to have access to areas like this? How high is the ceiling? Code in most new england states will ask for a minimum of 7' for rec room use. The door is not soundproof because sound proof is an impossibility. What's the manufacturer or model for it? More importantly - what is the seal for it like? The defacto rubber seal method is covered all over this forum and in rods book. Basement water? Have you ever had a problem? Is this past experience why you are interested in having that sort of flooring installed? The best investment we made for our basement was to have basement tech of NH install a parameter drainage system. As you know, we get whacked twice a year with some heavy flow - perhaps the grade of your home helps out in this situation... On flooring in basements - others may have a preference related to sound isolation, but I know how wet we can get in NE and I opt for Tile or a laminate that can withstand mosture. I avoid wood products because wood will bloat and get brittle through time. Treating a room after these surfaces are established is a good plan from what I've read so far.

hardwood vs concrete - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ght=#72038 some decent explaination by TomVan.

Cram wrote:

Your all covered up with plastic there with the existing framework. If you're concerned with noise to and from the above space, think of these: Please indicate what the first floor is constructed with. What thickness of subfloor and what is the finished floor above. What are the joists made from? That center beam? You'll need to box that in as well. Are you dealing with a support column?

The plastic on the ceiling was just to keep fiberglass dust from falling - the room was temporarily used as a workout area while the room next to it was being finished. I don't know the thickness of subfloor (this room's ceiling) but the house is less than 3 yrs old, so I will assume it matches current code. The joists are made from some type of particleboard with wood end caps - I'll post a picture so you can see what I mean. There are no support columns - the room is completely open. The "center beam" you refer to is just a forced hot air heating duct going to the far end of the room above. I intend my dropped ceiling to be fully below that. (see more on dimensions below and in the drawing above)

Cram wrote:

Utility piping & wiring? Does it run perpendicular to the floor joists? Do you need to be able to have access to areas like this?

There is some water/gas piping and electrical on the ceiling - some through the joists, and some pipes attached to the bottom of the jpists. This is all well above the intended dropped ceiling level.

Cram wrote:

How high is the ceiling? Code in most new england states will ask for a minimum of 7' for rec room use.

The raw concrete to floor joist height is 10' 6.5". One of the reasons I bought this house was because of the spectacular basement ceiling height. I intend the final height from floor to dropped ceiling to be 9' 4".

Cram wrote:

The door is not soundproof because sound proof is an impossibility. What's the manufacturer or model for it? More importantly - what is the seal for it like? The defacto rubber seal method is covered all over this forum and in rods book.

I don't have the door's specs handy, but I'll try to dig them up for another post. It was the best door within budget at the time. It's currently just normally hung so I will looking for sealing tips when I'm at the final stages.

Cram wrote:

Basement water? Have you ever had a problem? Is this past experience why you are interested in having that sort of flooring installed? The best investment we made for our basement was to have basement tech of NH install a parameter drainage system. As you know, we get whacked twice a year with some heavy flow - perhaps the grade of your home helps out in this situation...

My basement has been dry even through some floodlike conditions we've had since the house was built. We have wetlands less than a hundred yards behind the house that have become a flood plain, but no wetness in the basement at all. However, the concrete is young and needs to breath, and allowing for some dampness seems a good idea. That's why I'm going with the Dri-Core. Also I already used it in the adjoining space and I have almost enough left to complete the studio.

Cram wrote:

On flooring in basements - others may have a preference related to sound isolation, but I know how wet we can get in NE and I opt for Tile or a laminate that can withstand mosture. I avoid wood products because wood will bloat and get brittle through time.

The Dri-Core is not intended for glue-down flooring. The laminate just sits on the flooring's recommended foam underpad. Should I go for a thick laminate? This stuff http://floorone.com/product.asp?pn=V120 ... yal%20Teak is 12mm and seems a great bargain. I'm out of time once again. I'll post more details when I can.

The door into the studio room is from JELD-WEN and it's called "ProCore The Quiet Door". Anyone heard of this? In any case, it's already installed so it's not a variable here. The drawing above shows what will be in the room, but perhaps a few words here will help clarify how it will be used: I work from home, so this space will be an office as well as project studio. I'm a software professional, and I work with multiple computers which I hope to put in the area between the front concrete wall and the interior wall on that side. I guess I should refer to that as the “closet area”. All of the items in the room shown in the layout drawing already exist. So the equipment as shown is not variable (but of course the location in the room is). What I think of as the “front” of the room is the right side of the drawing where the studio monitors are parked on 3-ft. speaker stands. I sit at my large (9’ x 3’) table upon which will sit computer keyboard(s), large LCD monitor, laptop, mixing board, phone, paperwork, and anything else I need during my work day as it is the only flat surface in the room. (Although I imagine a small folding table will pop up now and again to handle overflow as needed.) For music recording I do a lot of work with instruments not requiring microphones. This includes keys, bass and electric guitar going through modeling preamps, and V-Drums. However the room will also be used for recording vocals and acoustic guitar, and perhaps on rare occasion real drums, so microphone recording is a concern. In the back of the room (left of the drawing) I show my JBL EON powered PA speakers and Mackie powered sub. This is to support rocking out with real other humans. I’m hoping that four or five people will be able to jam in the space without feeling too much like sardines. I think the 9’-4” ceilings will help to give the room an open feel even though it is only 274 sq. ft. I’m still not sure how to arrange access to the “closet area” – perhaps with a couple more ProCore doors. This area is very narrow (18”), so I’ll need to be clever in utilizing it. Since this area won’t have dropped ceiling, I will need to worry about sound leakage coming from upstairs into the closet area and into the studio through doors in that wall. That’s it for now – any and all comments are much appreciated.

I apologize for not collecting together all pertinent info in my initial posts yesterday. I think I still need to clarify my sound isolation needs. Sound leaving the studio to the outdoors: I have essentially no needs in this area. There are no neighbors in close enough proximity to be bothered. Sound leaving the studio to other parts of the house: The room directly above the studio is the family room. I don’t think I will have the time or budget to isolate such that TV watching in the family room would not be impaired when a band is jamming through the PA speakers in the studio. However, sound getting to the next floor up (where the bedrooms are) will be a bigger concern. Fortunately there are no rooms directly above the family room, so the bedrooms are offset from the studio. The ability to have children sleeping while a band is playing is a definite goal. Sound entering the studio from outdoors: The windows in the studio face woods, but the sounds of nature can still be intrusive. Because the interior walls are separate from the exterior walls I think I have a big head start here. The window sills (casings?) will therefore be quite deep and should allow for the insertion of some kind of framed sound absorber that can be removed when natural light is desired. Suggestions in this area are quite welcome. Sound entering the studio from other parts of the house: Only an issue when microphone recording which will be a small percentage of the studio’s use. If the family room had to be declared off limits during critical recording, that would be doable, but it would be ideal if it were possible for someone to be watching TV in the family room while vocals were being recorded in the studio. The adjacent room to the studio is home to a pool table and exercise equipment. It will definitely not be occupied when recording from microphones. BTW, the only water pipes in the studio ceiling are to outside spigots. There are no waste pipes. The sounds of running water and flushed toilets should not be a problem if I have sufficiently isolated from the adjacent room (which does have running water and waste pipes). The furnace is even further isolated as it is in the far side of the basement from the studio, with the exercise/pool room in-between. The studio room has a heating/cooling duct running across the ceiling which goes to a floor vent at the far side of the family room. The dropped ceiling will be fully under this duct. I have not decided if I will attempt to tap into this duct to heat the studio. If that opens too large a can of worms, I am willing to use space heating in the studio. As I am mostly below grade, cooling should not be often required. If necessary a small window A/C unit could be used as needed.

More info on the floor (studio's ceiling) joists: They're known as enginieered I-Joists. The have 2.5" wood flanges and are 10" tall. They were installed on 16" centers. BTW, the floor above has hardwood over the subfloor.

Cram, thanks for your responses - looks like you're the only one so far. I've corrected my image size problems and I think my descriptions are now fairly complete - I hope others are not staying away due to my initial gaffs. :oops: Basic room construction (walls, floor, ceiling) is my immediate concern so I will group my questions on this topics here. 1a) Room Shape: Is achieving the 1:1.50:2.10 room ratio worth the effort and waste of space? I’ve read that sticking to a rectangular room with known modes and applying appropriate treatments can be better than going down the difficult path of non-parallel walls (with hard to predict results). For a room of this type do folks here concur? 1b) As the image in my first post shows, the rear walls are concrete for a few feet and then wood frame above. There is a lip formed because the concrete wall is thicker than the wood. In the adjoining room I made use of that natural ledge (see photo below), but for the studio I am intending to close it off with a floor to ceiling wall. This way I don’t have a room with two widths. Again, is the sonic benefit worth the loss of space and a handy ledge? 2) Cram has offered the opinion that putting the interior walls ON the Dri-Core may be less than desirable because of wall weight and because if even minor flooding occurs the bottom plates of the walls are much more vulnerable to damage. I’m fairly confident that I have a dry basement, and I’m not sure that those walls will need to have extraordinary weight, because I don’t think my sound isolation needs to the outside will call for more than a standard insulated wall in those locations. However I am concerned about the resonance of the walls/floor. Will I NEED to make these walls very heavy to eliminate resonance problems? Will putting the walls on the Dri-Core create other resonance problems because of the way the walls will be connected to each other through the floor? If I don’t put the walls on the Dri-Core, the Dri-Core needs to have a quarter inch gap in from the walls all the way around the room so that the concrete can breathe (and dry out if necessary). I would prefer that gap to be behind the walls instead of in front of them. In the adjoining room I went the route of walls first and Dri-Core inside the walls, and it makes baseboard installation a little weird. Anyway, I think I’m hoping someone will say that putting the walls on the Dri-Core is fine. I have most of the Dri-Core already and it would allow me to get started on that part of the project right away. 3) As described in an earlier post I think my greatest sound isolation concern is between the studio and the floor above. I have enough space to put in a dropped ceiling and still have 9’-4” from finished floor to ceiling. I’m willing to foot some extra expense here to get highly effective ceiling tiles, but my basic question is: Is this likely to be sufficient? I was not planning on dry-walling the ceiling, but do folks here think it likely I will need to? Does the dropped ceiling provide enough of a seal? 4) …um I don’t know what the next question is yet, but I’m sure I’ll have more soon.

Anyway, I think I’m hoping someone will say that putting the walls on the Dri-Core is fine.

http://www.dricore.com/en/faquest.aspx reads that this engineered wood product "can support over 5,724 lbs. per square foot". Since this subfloor has an actual airspace on the underside I wonder is it going to make it's own noise as well when the amp is cranked up? For that reason alone I would put the walls on the floor instead of directly on the dri-core. In the event that it needs to come back out, your safe.

I'd like to know before I build, because in any case I'm not likely to rip things out afterword - I'd probably just live with it. If I'm going to gamble perhaps my better bet would be putting the walls on top of the Dri-Core in order to hold the floor more securely and prevent resonances there. :?:

Do what you want boss. You seem pointed in that direction. If this were me, you could not pay me to put it down for the simple reason stated. Measure twice cut once, do it right or do it twice....it's all relative to your experience.

Please don't get me wrong - I very much appreciate your input. I understood you to say that the main reason for going that way was ease of ripping out the floor if it didn't work out. I guess my question is: if ripping out the floor afterword were not an option, would your choice be the same? If the floor itself singing is your main concern would the other alternative make it less likely to be a problem?

Dolphran wrote:

If the floor itself singing is your main concern would the other alternative make it less likely to be a problem?

Dolphran, the answer to that question is no - you haven't solved a potential problem with a floating floor resonating by simply locking down the edge - the same as you don't stop a drum head from resonating by locking down it's edge. All you might succeed in doing is changing the pitch slightly. If it was indeed a problem - then it would require damping in the field. And with drycore it is potentially worse because they are a number of seperate pieces 2' square that interlock but do not fasten to the floor below. It is not what I would use for a studio. Rod

Thank you for your input, Rod. BTW, your book is on its way to me from Amazon. I hear the strong unwillingness to condone the use of DRIcore at all. I must respectfully ask, however, if this advice based on direct experience with this product, or based on a concern for problems it hypothetically might cause? I ask because not using the DRIcore would leave me potentially with the following problems: 1) Installing a standard sub-floor may make putting the dropped ceiling at the desired height impossible. 2) Gluing flooring to the concrete is not recommended because I’m below grade and the concrete is less than three years old and still needs to breathe. 3) The entrance door is already in place and having a floor height different from the current threshold would be a problem. 4) I already own almost enough DRIcore to do the job So I’m left with trying to understand how much of a risk I’d be taking with the DRIcore. Has anyone used it successfully in a studio situation?

The DRIcore is not intended to be completely unanchored; they say to screw into the concrete every eight feet. As far as I can tell, the only reason they recommend against more frequent attachment is to keep down the number of holes in the moisture barrier. Given my assumption of damp-but-not-wet being the worst case for my floor, I think I could comfortably anchor at a larger number of points. But that now leads me to wonder about the laminate floor on top. Is a floating floor like Pergo also not recommended?

I'm now trying to understand two leaf contruction for my ceiling. The existing subfloor is one leaf, and to create an air-tight seal I need the second leaf to be drywall. However, if I then add a suspended ceiling below that (to have a non-reflective ceiling at the right height for modes), is the suspended ceiling going to act as a third leaf and potentially reduce my iolation?

The optimum and most effective setup would be for you to use that layer of drywall as the second leaf with no suspended ceiling stucture below that. - If you're worrying about parallel surface reflection - treat it with a hung trap or cloud on the ceiling. - It will give you more head room. - Make sure you research the different methods of constructing a ceiling: using islation clips with furring/hat channels or Isolation clips that suspend an independant frame. Or even an independantly (not touching) ceiling frame which rests upon walls built with headers. If you for some reason are stuck on the idea of a suspended ceiling. Make sure you read performance data for the material in question. Read the effectiveness for the frequency isolation of the sounds you're planning to isolate. The answer to your question of hurting the isolation- basically, having multiple leaves will create frequency ranges which are nearly boosted or that they resonate between the three leaves. Read about how three leaves is not effective - http://www.greengluecompany.com/underst ... leLeaf.php A very good read which was found in this page of links. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1168

Thanks for your reply Cram. I did see that diagram in Rod's book. He indicates that suspended ceilings should not be considered for this type of sound isolation, and I have wondered if this may mean they will not have the detrimental effects of a true third leaf because they don't have the mass and airtight construction we normally assume for a leaf. In other words, is a suspended ceiling more like a really big cloud than it is like a third leaf? I am also concerned that if the answer to the above question is yes (it's just a cloud), then that will likely also mean that a suspended ceiling is not an effective barrier for room mode calculation. Especially considering room mode concerns are a low frequency issue which is where (I assume) suspended ceilings are least effective. The reason I was considering this is because my basic desire is to have a hard (laminate) floor and a soft (absorptive) ceiling, and use the 1:1.50:2.10 room ratio. I have a raw height of 10' 7” (concrete to ceiling joists) and I'm looking at a final height (for room mode calculation) of 9' 4”. The suspended ceiling seemed a straightforward way to get the soft ceiling at the right height. Of course the more I learn the more nothing seems straightforward.