Room Isolation - door through

You all have been a great sounding board. Thanks for the input and the help. Ordered there doors this morning, $90 a pop, 1" jamp, solid core, 36" x 80". Will take pics of the install and the extra mass that I add. .

Steel frame/ wooden door. That way you can add all the (cheap)mass you want to the solid core door without having to worry about it's weight. Within reason. Most of the hinges are welded or screwed directly to the frame. that would save a bit of $$ Any steel manufacturer will have steel doors you can buy of the shelf.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Actually, Rod suggests that it is better to build one single solid frame, all the way through, all the way around, and hang both doors on that one frame. So yes, the frame in that case actually will couple both sides of the wall. IIRC, the main reason Rod says he does that is for safety: hanging a pair of huge, massive doors on a flimsy single frame each is not a good idea. Better to have them both hung on a shared very solid frame, which goes right through the wall to both sides for strength. Rod says that the slight amount of coupling / flanking that you will get with this method is negligible in the overall scheme of things, which is why it is so important to make sure that there is absolutely no coupling elsewhere: since this door frame will be the weak point, you don't want any more of them! You build the rest perfectly so that you can do what has to be done at the door frame for safety. It's clear how you should do it, on page 96 of his book: one single large frame all around, with both doors hanging from it. - Stuart -

I'm very interested in this...Realizing it's an old thread. Do you, Stuart (and others here), still recommend this through-jamb approach? Rod Gervais indeed shows a through-jamb for both the single-door and double-door assemblies for 2-leaf (double-wall) systems. Mr. Gervais states in the beginning of the section that "I’ll let you know right now that this is one place I don’t worry about maintaining the separation of wall assemblies with the frames, even when using totally separated assemblies." (In 2nd edition of the book, those assemblies are illustrated on pages 106-107). There seem to be several potential isolation problems here: 1. The through-jamb itself The through-jamb itself obviously is a direct flanking path, since it's a single hard element cutting through from one room to the other, although, Rod states therein the resulting isolation compromise is negligible. "[A] through jamb does not effectively lessen the total isolation value of a wall assembly to any great degree. So don’t worry about any miniscule amount of isolation you may lose. Just build the frame straight through the cavity." (2nd edition, p104-105) 2. The coupling of the walls via the through-jamb In the illustrations, there is some apparent attempt at keeping the walls de-coupled via the layer of compressed rockwool, but that that attempt seems to be again somewhat-short-circuited, via the flanking path through the jamb and 1x4 wood casing shown. Does the compressed rockwool really benefit TL? If so, could neoprene rubber serve just as well or better than rockwool? 3. The connection of jamb to walls It's also not clear how the door jamb is attached to the walls (and ceiling). Is it screwed through to the two walls, which screws would provide another hard flanking path? Thank you to any and all for input on this.

I would also like to dive into this thread some more since I am exactly at this point to get the doors... Here is a steel door at home depot that weights more than the usual solid core wood doors (my assumption being mass = weight...) that I was going to get until I found this post... now I am not sure again. can you take a look please and provide some suggestions? https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-32 ... /100095265 I figure I can do some more beefing up with this one as well.

@Soundman2020 You can also include https://www.iacacoustics.global/acoustic-doors/ acoustic doors made by IAC Acoustics in the list. These are the best acoustic products in the world, manufactured by the experienced acoustic engineers and consultants.