Help to survive a barrel ceiling

Hi there, I hope I'll get some help after years of reading, and first of all excuse my poor english. My question: in my new home I'll have a 35 square meters room (7 by 5 meters) with barrel vault ceiling with max height of 3,50 meters. I already know that barrel ceiling is the worst one, but is it possible, with such a height, to build a room-in-room with decent acoustics suitable for a project studio eliminating the barrel ceiling? I'd use plasterboard to have a plane ceiling instead of the barrel one. Thanks so much in advance. EDIT: 7 nov 2012. I hope I'll get a reply - I tried to follow the guidelines posted in sticky!

hi, could you maybe post a picture ? thanks

Thanks for reply. Let me upload it, I cannot do it now because I'm browsing with my phone in a foreign country (I work as live sound engineer). Thanks so much.

I uploaded a plant, and 2 actual pictures. In all of these images there is a girder sustained by two walls. I already planned to get rid of these, and tried to write it on the pictures. After walls and girder removal I plan to have just a room with barrel vault roughly 7x5 meters, but I want some room for live equipment storage, so I'm planning to build a control/mixing room roughly 20-25 square meters. Any advice will be appreciated, a sketchp model would be a dream (I just can view projects on it, I'm not able to model something by myself). Thanks so much!! JKL

there is a girder sustained by two walls. I already planned to get rid of these

:shock: :!: DON'T! That is a structural support girder. I'm not a structural engineer, but it seems pretty obvious that a huge girder like that is holding up more than just the bit of wall above it. I suspect ot is holding up the entire roof! If so, and if you try to remove that girder and the wall, then the roof will come down on top of you. Do NOT do any such modifications unless you first get the building checked by a qualified structural engineer, who approves your modifications in writing. - Stuart -

Many many thanks for your answer, Soundman2020! I didn't specified that my project to remove the girder is sustained by two different structural engineers! The house was built in 1400 and completely restructured in 2000. When that work was done, the girder wasn't included in the project, and, in fact, it has no structural sense, because the barrel vault itself was designed many centuries ago with the main goal to distribute the load on sidewalls instead of ceiling. So the structure itself, to be eventually enforced, needs some walls reinforcement, instead of an unuseful ceiling girder. This is what they said me. In any case, I will remove it by requesting an official authorization that in my country is needed if you alter the structure of a building: you have to prove that you aren't risking at all to damage it. And in the building office of the town hall, who release the authorization, the techs working there have to check your engineer's calculations are right. So I already managed to remove girder safely, with some we could call "a double pass safety"... ;) As for acoustics and designing my room... what would you suggest?

Anyone has a tip for me?

Any help would be appreciated!

I think you're not getting many replies because you have such an unusual situation! As you already know, that curved ceiling is basically a lens that focuses sound, so that is going to be really hard to deal with. I don't think it can be done just with treatment: If that were my room, I think what I would do is to build a frame to somehow suspend a new ceiling below that, something like a very large hard-backed cloud, that runs from one side of the room to the other. The question is at what height do you put it? If you put it down low enough so that it covers a large part of the curve, then it might make the room too low. But if you put it up high then it wont be wide enough, and part of the ceiling/wall will still be curved. You will also need a lot of bass trapping in there, and with most rooms the bass trapping goes in the vertical corners, but you don't have any vertical corners! That's a real challenge to get right! I'm having a hard time imaging how it might be treated to get it to sound good. Do you know the radius of that curve? Is it circular or oval? - Stuart -

I already thought to build a completely new room inside that. In my mind, none of the original walls and ceiling will be visible. If you look at the vault from the front, you have 80 cm of vertical walls and then the circular curve with a radius of 2,60 m, so I suppose I can have a rectangular shape room of 5,50 by 4 meters with a ceiling of 2,30/2,40 meters. Eventually, I could enlarge the room by using (slightly) angled walls instead of vertical! Thanks so much for your reply!! Bye JKL

I can have a rectangular shape room of 5,50 by 4 meters with a ceiling of 2,30/2,40 meters.

That sounds like it would work. You could also angle just the top section of the side walls, or even make the room slightly narrower, in order to gain a bit more height. Just some more ideas! - Stuart -

As for acoustics? I already thought the solutions you're suggesting: they sound reasonable ways to achieve a good balance between rectangular shape & overall dimensions! But... Angle the top sections of the walls, or even the whole walls... what is supposed to sound better? Thanks so much for your support...! JKL

But... Angle the top sections of the walls, or even the whole walls... what is supposed to sound better?

I don't think there will be much difference, but it might not be easy to design a structurally sound load-bearing wall that is not vertical. It might be easier to just build a rectangle, with a peaked ceiling of some type.