Small studio build: Roof material?

Hi, my first post...I've done a search but can't find anything so here goes. I'm planning a studio from scratch. It will be at the bottom of my garden in England, backing onto a car-parking space with plenty near neighbours. 30 square metres, and 2.6m high (internally). Concrete blocks for the walls, room-within-room spaced 100mm from outer walls and filled with RWA45. It's for small band rehearsal and recording, and mixing. A single room. My (first) two questions are: -what would you recommend for the roof? It must be flat (to comply with local planning). I was thinking 100mm concrete, to match the walls, but that's scary heavy. How much soundproofing would I sacrifice if I made it from something less massive, say laminated plasterboard/plywood/whatever/30mm concrete/bituminous felt/any ideas? -I'd like part of the ceiling (above soffit-mount monitors) to be sloping. This means that the gap between my roof and plasterboard will vary from 100mm to a maximum of 500mm. How will this affect soundproofing, given that a bigger gap is better (and 100mm seems about usual)? Should I completely stuff the big gap with rockwool? Or would I be better building the inside room a regular cuboid with even gap, and put a big fat bass trap above the monitors? Etiquette question: I'll have lots more questions. Would it be most useful to start a separate thread for each area of interest, or maintain a long thread about my particular studio? Seems to me it would be more searchable if I did separate threads, as there are thousands of threads with titles like "my new studio" whereas "my bass trap has burst into flames" leads one straight to the discussion. Edit: the answer is here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17849 One long thread it is then. Thank you!

Hi there Im not an expert but am doing my own build down the bottom of the garden in suffolk so not to far from you, you say the roof has to be flat for planning, but are you 100% you need planning? Unless it has changed since I started my build or is drastically different in Cambridgeshire you may be surprised, however you haven't mentioned the actual dimensions of your build or the size of your garden so I may be completely wrong any how, For me the maximum height for an outbuilding was 2.4m to eaves and then there is usually a certain dimension from your boundary but when I phoned up the council office and explained the outside of the build was to be constructed with concrete blocks they were fine with me building as tight as 300mm from the boundary, the other restriction for an outbuilding is no bigger than 50% of the garden area for suffolk, I have a large spool of 8mm backer rod left if your interested as that part of the build is done, thank god :D Oh and the best thing I did was go into the ground so I have a ceiling height of 2.8m but it was all hand digging if I could have got a digger in the back garden I would have gone deeper still as the high ceilings have really made a differance :D

Roguejackal wrote:

Hi there Im not an expert but am doing my own build down the bottom of the garden in suffolk so not to far from you, you say the roof has to be flat for planning, but are you 100% you need planning? Unless it has changed since I started my build or is drastically different in Cambridgeshire you may be surprised, however you haven't mentioned the actual dimensions of your build or the size of your garden so I may be completely wrong any how, For me the maximum height for an outbuilding was 2.4m to eaves and then there is usually a certain dimension from your boundary but when I phoned up the council office and explained the outside of the build was to be constructed with concrete blocks they were fine with me building as tight as 300mm from the boundary, the other restriction for an outbuilding is no bigger than 50% of the garden area for suffolk ... Oh and the best thing I did was go into the ground so I have a ceiling height of 2.8m but it was all hand digging if I could have got a digger in the back garden I would have gone deeper still as the high ceilings have really made a differance :D

[/quote] Hi Mr Jackal, what I mean by saying the roof needs to be flat for planning is that no planning permission is necessary for a building less than 2.5m high, so I'm going for 2.5m high all round. And like yourself, I'll be digging down...that's going to be the most expensive bit but like yourself I appreciate a high(er) ceiling...I was going to go for 2.6m but as you mention 2.8 hand dug I take that as a challenge! I'll be using a digger. Respect due to you for all that hand digging! As far as I can tell we don't need planning permission or building control so long as it's less than 50% of the garden, less than 30 square metres, built of non-flammable material and less than 2.5m tall. I'm not aware of any restriction on building up to boundary, but I will be double-checking with the council.

I have a large spool of 8mm backer rod left if your interested as that part of the build is done, thank god :D

I don't know what backer rod is. I haven't got to that part of the build :? But I'll take it anyway :wink:

Roguejackal, just found your studio build thread. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15407 Damn but you work hard! All that digging... Seems like it was worth it though, really impressive isolation. Thanks for posting.