Need a rehearsal room

Hey everyone. This is my first post and I wanted to say what an awesome site. Thank you all for the much needed info. I'm gathering the info you guys asked for in your "Read before your Post" so later I will start another project post. But for now I'm hoping someone might be able to guesstimate something for me. I'm intending on building a band pracitce room in the corner of my downstairs basement. It will be approximatley 15' x 15'. Concrete floor. Two of the walls are block and form a corner. The rest of it is open so the other two walls will be new construction. It's a typical new residential home. I did a db check today. With some thumping bass lines at about 95 to a 100 db's, I checked the db readings at various locations, directly upstairs, outside, down the hall etc.. Anyway directly above the proposed practice room I was getting around 70 db. Since the only thing in the way is carpet, padding, plywood floor and then floor joists I expected as much. OK my question. If I have $5000 dollars can I build a room that will allow me to play my drums at 6 in the morning if I want to. I'm sure I will have to float the floor and so forth. I'm just looking for some opinions. I plan to spend alot of time reviewing the other posts and links but if you guys think it will take alot more than $5000 then I might be wasting my time. I'm not sure I'm willing to spend more than that. Anyway, thanks again for your help. I hope I have at least given you enough info to answer back. If not just say so I will try and do better.

i'm building a drum room in my garage, and i hope to be able to play at 6am like you said. and, i also hope to spend less than $5000. so, i've been studying this for months and i still believe it is possible. does that help you? however, if it turns out that playing drums full volume all night long is impossible, i won't be too disappointed. it's a tough goal. basically i'm willing to use a certain amount of money toward this goal, and i'm studying to get the best isolation i can with this much money. we will have to see how it turns out. it will sure be 1000% better than the situation i have now. good luck dan

Hey Dan, I'm with ya on that one. I don't really expect to rock out all night but I do want to be able to have band practice till nine or ten oclock. I read a great topic yesterday about increasing the mass by attaching a couple layers of sheetrock in between the floor joists. You've probably seen it already. I'm going to study that more and use it for sure. I'll let ya know how well it works when I finish. Thanks for your reply, I felt like I could do that for 5k since I will doing most of the work myself. Have a good day...

OK, I've think I've asked enough questions on here, I think I"ll take my first stab at answering one. I'm actually in the process of building an entire studio in my basement and yes, I think you can probably build a 15' by 15' room that will be relatively quiet for under $5000. First of all, are your concrete blocks hollow or filled? If they're hollow, like mine, I believe they have an stc of around 40-45 which is probably good enough to leave alone. So it looks like after that you're going to have to build two walls, one door, and a ceiling. Check out all of this stuff if you haven't already. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2125 THis link will also give you a good idea on how to build your walls, ceilings are relatively the same and yes I did sheetrock attached to the floorboards and it seems to work quite nicely. Maybe, for a little more $ look into limp mass vinyl. http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/fulltext/ir761/ So, here's a quick pricelist based on what I had to buy here in IL. I'm going to include a drum riser to help to eliminate structure born kick drums from getting out. Lumber for walls and riser = $300 Epdm for riser = $150 Double layer drywall on ceiling= 16, 4x8 sheets @ 7$ = 112$ Double layer drywall on walls (I guessed your ceiling height @ 8')= 35 sheets @ 7$ = $245 Resilient channel (on both sides of wall and ceiling)= 35 @ 3$ for 12 footers =$105 3 inch rockwool insulation in appx 450 sq ft of cavities = appx 60, 4' x 2' batts @ 8$ = 480$ ( I was able to locally get my hands on Fibrex 3 inch rockwool at 8# pcf for 32$ per packeage of four) Usg acoustic sealant= appx $100 Door = $150 Door seal kit = $200 - $400 Screws, joint compound, etc. = maybe $300 Electrical components = $200 Total cost of materials= $2542 And then you should have one hell of a quiet room with no air. I haven't done the hvac in mine yet so I'm not sure how much that is going to cost and its going to be the only thing that I get hired out. All of these prices are based on Peoria, IL prices too and I guessed high on everything so I'd say you're definitely below your $5000 point. A floating room within a room is the way you would really isolate yourself, but is generally not possible in a basement, in the U.S., unless you're a band of little people. I hope this is helpful and if I've forgotten something just tell me. Good luck. Tim Wheat

timwheat wrote:

. . . are your concrete blocks hollow or filled? If they're hollow, like mine, I believe they have an stc of around 40-45 which is probably good enough to leave alone.

Quoting Knightfly: ". . . pay more attention to TL at 50 hZ than you do STC - if you design for the lows, the rest will be no problem." (Source) For more info about block performance and how it relates to STC and how STC doesn't tell the whole story, see the "Block walls.....to fill or not to fill?" thread.