Sorry if this has already been covered, but I searched for a while and couldn't find anything specific to my situation. I'm doing a build-out in a space on which I only have a two year lease, and I'm trying to keep things simple but effective. It's a commercial space in Yonkers, NY that currently has pretty crummy old vinyl tiles over a wood subfloor/deck with an unoccupied basement underneath. The live room will be about 1000 sq.ft., control room about 300 sq.ft. Ceilings are 10' high. I'm primarily recording acoustic music - chamber music, jazz, voice and accompaniment, percussion, etc. - and we'll have a 9' Steinway in the space.
For aesthetic and acoustic reasons, I need to do something to improve the current situation, and I was considering simply covering the whole floor with sheets of OSB over some kind of foam underlayment. Does anyone have any advice or ideas about this one way or other? Is it advisable or problematic? Any minimum thickness or density that you might recommend for either the OSB or the foam? Are there other materials than OSB that I should consider? Obviously, it's usually used for subfloors, but is it crazy to use it as the main floor surface? Any other construction details that should be included in the plan?
Thanks in advance for your help!
-Ryan
OSB floor over existing floor?
Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 13305.
Can you remove the tiles and utilise the wooden floor? Or lay new vinyl.
Why do you think the floor is causing you acoustic issues?
What is it you are trying to achieve...isolation, acoustic treatment...some mixture of the two?
Thanks for your responses. I suppose that I could remove the existing tiles, but all that's under them is old subfloor covered in adhesive. My idea is that it's easier to just drop something new over the existing floor as-is rather than ripping up all the old tile.
Also, re the acoustic issues, I'm simply hoping that by adding another layer to the floor, I'll increase the mass a bit. I'm not especially worried about isolation, but I'd like to dampen the structure more so that it's not as resonant. It would be nice if the use of a foam underlayment decreased impact noise for the downstairs tenant, but that's not a major concern for me. The space under the live room is only storage for the other tenant, so I'm not worried too much about bothering anyone.
The only other thought that I had was that by doing this, I'd have some ability (albeit probably limited) to decouple the floor surface from the deck, and therefor to also isolate it a bit from the walls. Am I totally wrong in thinking that that might happen with a setup like this?
I'm obviously not trying to float a floor, just looking for a very affordable and easy way to refinish what I've got while making it a little more massive / dampened and possibly gaining some slight reduction of impact noise.
Any other thoughts you have would be really appreciated. Anyone else do anything like this?