Live room with sprung dance floor

Hello, I have been reading this forum for a long time and have asked the occasional question. I have moved to regional NSW in the last year, from living in a factory in an industrial area of sydney to living in a remote property - in fact an old school house that was built in 1886. On the property we have constructed a coloubond shed. The dimensions are 21m x 10m x (3.5m at the outer walls and approx 5m height in the middle). We have just established an artist residency program out here which will see 4 national and international artists per year invited out to work with the local community and landscape to create work in their genre (in the first year there will be a photographer, painter, dancer and sound/installation artist). Part of escaping the high rents of the city means we plan on building a studio, for ourselves as well as any bands who might want to come and record. We don't necessarily want to make a business out of it, but if that happens, then fabulous. We have the cement slab laid and have constructed a bedroom, bathroom and lounge room in the back portion of the building leaving approx 10m x 16m to create a CR, Live Room, 2 small iso booths and another room approx 4 x 4 which will be used by a visual artist (my wife) to paint in etc. (I will install some tie lines into her room as well so it can be utilised in the overall studio. The lounge room we built has a studio window into it from what will be the live room and can be used as another space, it's domensions are approximately 6m x 5 m although there is minimal sound isolation there. The property is 5km's from the nearest house and what we are mostly trying to achieve is to not hear music from the studio down to the old school house where we live, this is approx 30 meters away. I would also like the CR to be as isolated as possible and to have good isolation between iso room etc. When we lived in Sydney we lived in a factory where we had monthly gigs and art exhibitions, so I know quite a few bands who will come down to record anythign ranging from Big band to rock and experimental music. I will have a rough sketch up posted shortly hopefully. and would love any ideas on it. I would like to have as large a live space as possible as I often work making sound in theatre and dance so would like to have the oportunity for dancers and performers to come and work here. So, I have been thinking that a control room of approx 6 x 4 (3 meters at external wall and 4.5 m in the centre),m A live room of 10 x 10 with iso booths build into it to stop the parallel walls etc. If possible I would like to put in some kind of sprung dance floor for visiting dancers, but I wonder about their ability to take load over extended periods and wether something like, say a grand piano, would effect the floor if it was left on it in the one position? Anyway, I wonder if anyone has had any experience with a studio with a sprung floor? would love some feedback and I look forward to posting more as it progresses.

Not many photos to show so far, but here is what I have. Vic

Nice place! Nice ideas! A friend of mines significant other had built a combination recording studio / dance studio and the live room features a sprung floor plus a couple of pianos (one being a grand piano) plus drums. The approach is to use leveling risers which spread out the weight (and decouple to boot) to avoid too much pressure on a given section of floor. and the other major feature is making sure everyone who uses it knows that respect is critical and to treat it with care... So far, 5 years later, it's still in perfect shape. I cannot give much in the way of detail on the floor itself except to say it is very heavy duty and yet springy. I don't know the cost but I'm guessing it was pretty expensive. Ymmv.

Hi Glenn, Thanks for the info, I'll look into spreaders tonight and see what I come up with. I am uploading a sketchup JPG. I understand it's a very poor quality drawing, which is because I don't know how to use sketch up yet ;-) My question about this drawing isn't about walls etc, at the moment the walls all look like single walls but will all be double walls in the final drawing. My question about this is, would a design like this work? Should I put an iso booth in each corner of the live room to stop it's squareness. This would also mean that I can move the iso booths from where they are in the picture so that sarah can have a bigger room, and then put iso booths in the corners of the live room? By having a simple design like this my thoughts are that it would give me the largest live room possible. I would love to hear your thoughts on the general layout. Vic P.s - Oh and in this picture there should be doors from the iso rooms into the live room

i think i would lay this out where the "quiet" sections are together - art room, kitchen, bath, bedroom and the studio is on the other side and the CR and iso sit between them with connecting halls/airlocks. this way the area most likely to be loud or bouncing is further from the restful/relaxing spots. also it would allow the CR to use the iso rooms independently of the live room/dance room so if you had someone doing dance and someone else simply recording some acoustic instruments and vox or just mixing, post-production etc. if could be accommodated and the walk areas would allow easy access to the kitchen and bath without disturbing other activities.

I don't tink there will be many projects happening at the same time because this place is in regional NSW about 600 km's from Sydney. SO it's not east for people to drop in and we don't have enough accommodation to house many people at one time, well not many people from several different projects. I have put the lay out like this for a number of reasons. So that Sarahs room and the Control Room (also known as my room ;-) ) are up one end so if someone else is staying there, who isn't using the live room, they will be free to work in the lounge room, which is also a visual arts studio (i.e - cement floor so you can get paint on it, etc etc). That way, we can all be working and have some privacy. Also, the reason i have put the rooms like this is that the cement slab has been laid as 5 individual slabes eith foam horizontally in between each slab, so I was trying to place all rooms on tehse slabe so that in each double wall, one wall is sitting on different sides of the cement slab. If I removed the iso booths in that location, what would be the best way to place them in the corners of the live room to change the shape? Vic

you could put the booths on the far wall towards the bedroom and lounge? then you can see them from the CR and maybe a third room next to them for storage?