Best options if NOT Floating a floor-Updated

I haven't totally decided yet, but I'm leaning towards NOT floating a floor. I've read about floating a floor on this site, along with reading about cutting the concrete slab or having an isolated slab. In thinking about the fact "I'm in a finished basement now with 2 stories above me" what effect would cutting the slab around the vocal booth or the control room have with the strength integrity of the concrete floor"? Also, as far as a doing a regular floated floor, if I lay the 2 x 4's flat, I'm cutting into my overall floor to ceiling height. I've contemplated about this until my head is hurting. Well, I pretty much decided NOT to float the floor, cut the slab or isolate the slab. With that said, I'd like to know what would be my BEST option to reduce flanking noise going from my floor to my walls etc etc? Consider this also... I will be operating a Midi-Sequencing studio basically. I won't be recording live drums . Most of the instruments will be running direct to the board for recording. I also have a vocal booth. That's all folks! Any suggestions? (I also enclosed a design of the studio below) Thanx Stan

First, you won't weaken your walls by cutting the floor; the wall's strength comes from the wall thickness, grade of concrete, amount of rebar inside, and the sizing of the footing the wall was poured on. These are all mandated by code and type of soil the building is on. However, you WOULD weaken the floor itself especially if it wasn't poured on a well-compacted base; there could be voids under the slab that aren't causing a problem right now because the slab is resting on the inner lip of your wall footing, and is all one piece. For what you want to do, I'd not even consider floating a floor; the lost headroom, major headaches, etc, just aren't worth it for a room that will see no live drums or bass. If you build out your separate inner walls as shown , use some type of sway braces to anchor the tops of new wall frames, and suspend your ceiling INSIDE those inner walls on either RC or RSIC clips, insulate properly and caulk everything the RIGHT way, you'll reduce the sound transmission to the upper floors enough for what you are doing. For one thing, getting a balanced mix is much easier when keeping the SPL's down to around 85 dB anyway; this is just a solid listening level, no blood pouring from the ears or anything :? HTH... Steve

Thanx Steve! Another question... For those of us that have decided NOT to float a floor, what would you say is the BEST that could be done to concrete slab floors/wood floors/MDF-Plywood floors to reduce flanking noises/low frequency transmission? Most of us will be installing hard wood or laminated flooring, so If possible, please include the construction necessary and the materials needed as per the, er, "BEST" that we can do.

Possibly Butyl sheeting? If this is possible, from my concrete slab floor on up, would it be... 1.) moisture barrier 2.) Butyl sheeting 3.) Plywood or particle board (Or could this be skipped and go from #2 to #4) 4.) All necessary prepping for laminated wood flooring, then the flooring itself?

Some sort of Butyl sheeting was suggested to me too so I'm anxious to see what Steve has to say about this. :!:

Besides the Butyl sheeting question I asked above, I have another one... I found this thread... http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ght=#28964 I assume this drawing indicates that the stud frames can touch each other. If this is the case, is it due to the fact that the drywall decouples at each individual frame? (1st drawing at top of post) Thanx Stan

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Possibly Butyl sheeting? If this is possible, from my concrete slab floor on up, would it be... 1.) moisture barrier 2.) Butyl sheeting 3.) Plywood or particle board (Or could this be skipped and go from #2 to #4) 4.) All necessary prepping for laminated wood flooring, then the flooring itself? Stan, if your floor is BONE dry you might get away with a butyl sheet (don't need any OTHER barrier) - butyl has roughly twice the damping ability of rubber or neoprene, so between that and any Constrained Layer Damping that takes place, it should lessen flanking from room to room - best would be if you ISOLATE each room's floor, just as if you were fully floating them, and put each room's single frame and single leaf on its own floor. A layer of particle board above the butyl will improve m-a-m on the whole thing, plus give a better surface for the laminated flooring. If you can tape a large piece of saran wrap to your concrete overnight, and you see ANY sign of moisture condensed on it the next morning when you lift it up, your floor is NOT dry enough. IF that's the case, then about the only way you might get away with that floor is to have a dehumidifier crunning 24/7, only turning it off during use of the rooms. Warm air drives any room moisture toward the cooler surface (the earth) so will try to drive moisture thru the butyl, which it can NOT do; as a result, the moisture would stay in the flooring and rot it. Keeping the overall RH below 40-42% would be mandatory, which all wooden musical instruments prefer anyway. cyeazel, your case is almost entirely different; you're talking about a concrete floor that's BETWEEN two habitable spaces, so moisture wouldn't be a problem (assuming both spaces are conditioned, that is) - so for your setup, I'd go for it (although IIRC, you've been talking about floated floors ANYWAY, right??!? (And you SHOULD be, if you still want your office people to not "fire warning shots to your head" as you climb the stairs... :? Besides the Butyl sheeting question I asked above, I have another one... I found this thread... http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ght=#28964 I assume this drawing indicates that the stud frames can touch each other. If this is the case, is it due to the fact that the drywall decouples at each individual frame? (1st drawing at top of post) It's not too bad for inner frames to touch intersecting inner frames, same with outer-to-outer - worst case it costs you 1 or 2 dB in total isolation, and not at all frequency bands - don't remember which end of the spectrum is worse, but either way it's negligible. What you DON'T want is for inner frame to touch OUTER frame at any point - this can cost you up to 20 dB of isolation at midrange, and up to about 6 dB @ 50 hZ. Another thing that's NOT shown in that drawing is backer rod; this is needed at all caulk joints to prevent early failure. See this http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=19989 for a pretty complete rundown... Steve

I'm a little confused on which way this should be... Should I.. 1.) Lay the butyl sheeting down, put particle board on top THEN install my walls on top of the butyl sheeting/particle board (for each seperate room)? OR 2.) Build and install my inner frames THEN put the butyl sheeting/particle board in between those frames? BTW...I did that test and it was B-O-N-E dry :) Thanx!

I just recently started thinking about a lot of these things myself and started a thread on Gearslutz about the same kinds of questions-->Link to Thread The product several folks have pointed to as a possible winner for subflooring is DriCore and then you can use an other sort of laminate on top of it you'd like. I liked the idea of Dricore because of some concerns about moisture in the my space, which I'll be working towards resolving. It'd be nice to know I've got something underneath the floor that deals well with a small degree of moisture though. I also like what I hear about it's ability to warm up a space and kind of eliminate that "I'm in a cold basement" feeling. I'm about to start my own studio build thread and this will be one of the topics I touch on. I'll also note, I need to search through the threads here and see if this has been touched on... I'd guess it has at some point and I'm unsure of what the verdict might have been. Good luck and please let us know how things go. Thanks. Lee ------------ Edited to add some links to former posts that touch on this product: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ht=dricore http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... icore=LINK

what about this? http://www.team-et.se/swedish/bygg.htm It comes highly recommended from professional studio builders in Sweden, just found out about it, too bad I already made one floor with another much more expensive solution. a

Yeah, I've dun the same with my current control room. The green stuff is called ISOFIX here in Holland. Works well. Also used it to build a drumriser. It ain't cheap tho.

I checked out the video for the Advance subfloor (I couldn't get directed to the dricore link) but I'm not so sure it is what I'm looking for as far as my "Studio" is concerned, but I may be using it for the rest of my basement. According to Steve, the Butyl sheeting has very good damping abilities. The Advance subfloor uses a heavy-duty polyethylene corrugated plastic which I'm not sure how it stacks up to Butyl sheeting. (If anyone knows, let me know! :) ) Anyway, until I get a chance to contact the manufacturer or get info on here, I'll most likely stick with the Butyl sheeting...which leads to my question... In my last post before this one I was confused as to how the Butyl sheeting-particle board should be put down. (see my last post above) Has anyone tried this or have any suggestions on which way it should be done? Thanx

Stan, the answer is (1) - by putting your walls on top of particle board which is on top of the butyl, you're building sort of a "mini" floated room setup - I think you'd see a small improvement in room-to-room isolation that way, as compared to having both frames of your betwee-room walls resting on the same concrete (but with a thermal break material under each frame, of course) - What this will do is make it so any sound vibrations that "rattle" one frame must go thru particle board, butyl, concrete, butyl, particle board before they can directly rattle the OTHER frame. (This won't change the coupling you get thru the air/insulation gap, but it should reduce flanking AROUND that gap... Steve

Just wanted to make a quick comment on the following:

knightfly wrote:

First, you won't weaken your walls by cutting the floor; the wall's strength comes from the wall thickness, grade of concrete, amount of rebar inside, and the sizing of the footing the wall was poured on.

In many cases it is probably safe to say that the wall won't be affected by cutting the slab, but this does depend on how the wall was designed. In the case of a retaining wall, there will be a large horizontal thrust at the bottom of the wall due to the soil pressure acting on the face of the wall. This load needs to be resisted somehow. In most cases the footing for the wall will be buried sufficiently in the ground so that it is 'keyed' in and can't move. But in some cases, the design will rely on either friction on the base of the slab, or in the case of a basement, the slab can be used to hold apart the base of opposing walls. In both of these cases, cutting the slab to isolate it can affect the stability. The result isn't likely to be catastrophic - but you could find that the base of the retaining wall moves in by the thickness of the sawcut, which will negate the benefit of isolating the slab in the first place. Becasue of this, before cutting existing slabs in cases like these, you should first seek the advice of a structural engineer.

Agreed; in most cases, the fact that the basement is a rectangle, and that the footings are typically 16" wide by 8" tall with several rebar inside, would add to the strength of the wall/footer to resist inward push by bermed soil outside; still, I would never discourage anyone contemplating this modification from asking a competent (and LOCAL) engineer... Steve

Steve, what thickness and durometer of butyl sheeting would you recommend? I called a place today concerning this and the guy thought I was nuts for it's use! :) I explained things somewhat to him, but he couldn't recommend anything.