Plans for small 3rd floor studio...

Overview: 2400 sq. ft. unit on the 3rd floor of an old shoe factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin... known as the Fortress Building. 5 or 6 total floors. Other wings of the building are current homes to manufactures with heavy duty equipment. This whole unit is already in our possession. It is the combination of myself recording bands and some friends doing video production. They will occupy most of the building while I will be building in an area of about 540 sq. ft. My goals are to build a large enough tracking room for drums, a bass player and two guitar players. The room only has to host the drummer and players with their instruments. The amps will be isolated outside the room. The tracking room is the focal point of this post but eventually I will be treating a control room. This is very much a DIY build, perhaps more than many of you may think. I plan to create my own a/c/ & heat duct system using a powerful window heat/cooling unit. I also plan on running some sort of pvc type piping system to house an extension cord and a breakout box..................... Here are some photos of the entire unit: http://picasaweb.google.com/static trash/TheFortressSuite The Process: Below is a sketch up of the two rooms I get to work with. Plans are to use the room on the left as my tracking room and the room on the right as a control room. The white transparent area is the area I outlined to build this room. The reason for the gap space around this room is due to the windows and fire escape and the electrical breaker box. We need to keep some of this area open, so my plan is to work within a 16x15 room size. So far I have began to tear down the drywall inside the room I will be working with. These rooms were hallow and I know this is a good place to start. Here is a photo of the room I will be working with: I have started to screw the outside walls on better as they were not very secure before. Next step is to clean them up and caulk all areas. This weekend I might double up the one outside wall with drywall. We're going to be using the long wall in the main room to paint a large green screen, so a fresh drywall plate to work with may be nice anyhow. Neighbors: We're on the South side. The whole building has a huge courtyard. No neighbors to the south or the north. The West wing cannot be occupied. The east side of our unit has two huge double steel doors, plus a huge sliding steel door and neighbors that aren't around very often. Above us we have a very nice and very accepting photographer neighbor. He lives and works above us. He is very cool with what we plan to do and gives his full support. He is the least of my worries. I am not totally sure what is happening below us. I know a large portion of the unit below us is this live audio and lighting company who use the area to store equipment but there might be a smaller unit below my room. I will try to find out more details on this asap. My Plans: Okay, so on to my plans. This is going to be a long process for me, which is fine. I would love to list my budget but it is coming in from my day job pay checks (which aren't too bad) and any sessions I have while this build is going on. The ceilings are 12' tall, however there is a sprinkler system that gets in the way. I do not plan on having anyone remove this system whatsoever. My plans are to work around it. **Please save responses about fire code or breaking city laws. I have already talked with the photographer upstairs who has been around nearly 4 years. He says that nobody ever comes to inspect the place. They only come to check the gas meters and they're not in the units anyhow. He lives there and he's not suppose to.. yeah, it's obvious he lives there** So, anways, based on my photos I need to figure out the best way to work around the sprinklers. My initial thought was to build underneath them That would give me about 9' 6" to work with. That is the height from the floor the first pipe. Either way, the big 18" sq. supporting beams get in the way, anways. The actual sprinkler heads are about 3-4 inches from the ceiling. I'm use to working in my 6.5' basement or my 7' dining room, so I'll be happy with that..... BUT wouldn't it be nice to use higher ceilings if they're there? What are your thoughts? Again, find photos of my room here: http://picasaweb.google.com/statictrash ... tressSuite Here is a rough sketch I did of the room inside a room. This would give me final dimensions of about 14' x 14' at the longest points. The drum riser is about 6' x 6' at the square. Obviously, this rooms primary objective is to record drums but must also fit other band members. It can also be used to record vocals after the initial tracking. Could I fit a vocal booth inside there too? Should I? I am unsure where I should put a door. Should I put double doors between the tracking and control room to save valuable wall space? Should I put a door in the tracking room and a window to divide the tracking and control rooms? These are all thoughts up in the air. ahhhhhhhhhhh..... Thee Floor: The one question you guys don't want to hear. Yeah, I read it this time. "Please don't tell us you want to float your floor if you are building on an upper level.........". I am not trying to be sarcastic. I simply cannot hire a contractor to tell me if the floor will hold another floor. On the 5th floor of this build, there is a wing FULL of pianos. Tons and tons of pianos and piano parts. A guy use to repair/sell and work on pianos there. One day he left and never came back. That's the story. This building has a huge freight elevator. You'll notice from my plans/pictures that the area I plan on building in is directly over those huge 18" sq. support beams. All I'd really like to do is build a floor to help keep as much sound out from going downstairs as possible. If I can do it lightly, then build a small drum riser inside the room to help even more, then great! BUDGET! Alright, I guess I'll include a budget... Let's say $3,000 I just want to end with a big THANK YOU! I know many of you are professionals and work in a professional manner. Abiding by city codes, etc, etc. Understand me when I say that I'll be able to get away with a lot in this building. Milwaukee is a strange place. All I really want is straight forward answers pertaining to the questions I asked. Overall, if this project fails in 2 months, a year, two years... I'll still be happy that I tried. If it works out, then I'll be just as happy. This is a learning experience and I am excited to do it. I have read a lot about this over the last 3 months or so and am close enough to being ready to do this with or without any additional help from anyone. I am a single dude with a steady income and time to spend. I will not disappoint myself. IF ANYONE THINKS I SHOULD SWAP TRACKING ROOM AND CONTROL ROOM.... SPEAK UP! I hope a did a decent job explaining this. I'm sure I'll read this again and find a bunch of stuff I missed but for now, once again, thank you all.

"**Please save responses about fire code or breaking city laws." Guess that ends my input before it even starts. Ya never know what will be a conversation killer...I always think that asking the pros here that have forgotten more then you diy'ers will learn to not say something or never-mind this or that is counter productive. We will see...

I have a hard time understanding that sentence, however, I think it's a good idea to point out what advice should be avoided when assisting my build. It's not going to change how I go about this. I just want to know what anyone thinks about the way I plan to build this. It may have been better just to say, "Hey! I have this space. It's 14'x14'x9' for a tracking room. What's the best way to isolate this? Now I'm be sarcastic. :)

I picked up a copy of Rod Gervais's book today. Read through what I needed to know for sure. It's hard to get a straight answer from the internet of course, so I think I found it. Since I am building on the 3rd floor, I would like to keep as much drum sound out of the lower floor as possible but now I realize it may not be possible. A floating floor will do nothing. It's too risky to build a sand filled deck. In his book, Rod does not get into many more specifics about how it may be possible to do this, so my guess is... it's not!?!?! Anyone have any other ideas of how to go about this? I mean, if it's possible to isolate the rest of the unit I am building in using a 2 leaf system and resilient channels, why is it not possible to do the floor in the same manner? Thanks!

I would like to keep as much drum sound out of the lower floor as possible but now I realize it may not be possible. A floating floor will do nothing.

Actually, a correctly built floating floor WILL do what you want. That's not the issue. The issues are: whether or not you have the skills to do it properly, whether or not you have the budget to do it correctly, and whether or not the building structure would be able to carry the load. It seems like the answers to those questions are unknown, so it makes no sense to consider a floating floor, even though it would in fact accomplish what you want. Another thing I'm curious about: What its the purpose of that short diagonal wall on your diagram, across the top right, between your inner leaf and outer leaf? It seems to be creating a third leaf in that area. thus probably reducing your low frequency isolation. - Stuart -