Carport conversion or build out back

I just joined the forum today after a year of lurking and trying my best to get some education. Thank you all for a great site. I'm in the planning stages to construct a small recording/practice room. I'm a drummer and need to be able to practice late into the night as well as work on demos without disturbing neighbors or wake up my kid. Do kids really need all that sleep, sheesh....anyhoo... The plan is to have a contractor build the shell for me, 20'x20' ought to fit me and my gear just fine. The room I have now is smaller than that and works. After the shell,hvac, and electric is completed I'll begin the construction on the inside (floated floors,inside out walls etc, more on that in another post). My question is, assuming I follow the correct procedures for soundproofing, will I get away with converting the existing carport? Baby keeps sleeping. Neighboors keep neighbor-ing. The obvious advantage to this is that I might be able to keep the existing roof and be able to tie into the house juice and hvac hopefully. OR Should I start from scratch with an outbuilding in the backyard? I live on 1/4 acre and could fit it, and its a scenario that I would prefer, but assume the cost for that site vs carport may be too high. I'll try to upload a couple pics to help you all see what I'm rambling about. A rough floorplan of the existing carport and a couple shots for perspective. Thanks for reading and I appreciate any suggestions and questions.. Kirk

This is a gut reaction, I am thinking that what you are saving from using the room are not going to be worth the hassles and troubles of sealing up an old structure that was never intended to be tight. I would build from scratch rather than try to reuse the carport.

Thanks for the tip. I agree, just trying to save some dollars wherever I can. I'll check out some of the other threads that feature free standing buildings.....

Agree with Innovations 100% - most of the sleep I lose comes from trying to help people ADAPT rather than purpose-build their rooms. Also, please don't build ANYTHING square - there's only two room shapes worse for acoustics; a perfect cube, and a sphere. Another consideration - your carport is ATTACHED to the house - this is a recipe for flanking noise; any attachment points will transmit structure-borne noise directly to the shell of the house, which will be more than happy to regurgitate it into every room. One good thread to check out for free-standing rooms is Dietcookie's one (it's a "sticky" - called "from shed to studio" - you could scale this up to your needs but keep the same construction techniques; once you decide on a better shape than square, I can calculate spans and stuff for framing sizes... Steve

Thanks Steve...I was pretty sure I'd get busted on the square idea. I am planning for it to be a one room facility though. Basically a soundproof control room that I'll practice drums and record in. Would a 20x22 be a good starting point? I think once I have that locked down I'll post back later with a new thread and a design for opinions. The "shed to studio" link for dietcookie was a great help, I'll certainly be reading that one again (and again, and again.....) Kirk

If you're going to build a rectangular room, 22 x 19 x 8 works a lot better - more balanced modal response by far. I'd plan on at least a couple of slat resonator wall sections, placed across corners and tuned to some of the typical drum problem frequencies (like around 300 hZ for kick drum) Raising the ceiling to 9 feet doesn't hurt modal distribution, and gives more distance to the ceiling for overhead mics. For acoustically good rooms, you need to stop thinking like a carpenter - all those even multiples of 4 feet, parallel walls, etc, are great for easy construction, but SUCK for acoustics... Steve

Kirk - if you can't afford to build a new building you could modify what you have like this. cheers John

Wow, Thanks John. I'll consider that as an option if the outbuilding plan becomes too costly. At least I could have a place to practice after the baby goes to sleep, which is no small consideration for me. And I wish I could think like a carpenter :wink: That would make this allot easier to figure out. The dimensions you suggested sound good to me Steve. I'll use em to start sorting out the plan. I'm thinking of building on a new slab with block exterior walls. The roof I would like to keep flat, or only slightly sloped (like my carport roof), in order to keep the new building visually similar to the house. Anyway, thanks a ton for your time and suggestions, more later as the design takes shape.... Kirk

Those would be final, INSIDE dimensions between hard surfaces - so the outer shell would be larger. If using blocks, consider having them filled with sand and doing an inner, lighter wall of maybe one layer of 15mm drywall on metal studs placed about 8" inside the concrete, and filled between with insulation - this construction, if carried out as well for ceiling, etc, can get you about STC 80, with TL over 40 dB clear down to 50 hZ - if you can match this with the ceiling construction, you could thrash your drums to pieces and by the time the sound got inside the house, it should be totally inaudible. Granted, a ceiling that good would be tough to build - not to mention doors (a sound lock would be mandatory) windows (pricey for sure) - the good news is, with just single layer wallboard inside you'd need less bass trapping to get good sounding drum tracks in there, since the wallboard would act as a panel trap for lower frequencies. Hope that helped clarify a few things... Steve