James's garage drum booth thread

After all of the great advice over the past week or so, here's the story so far: I spent a few days ensuring that the existing ceiling (outer leaf) was boulstered up with an extra layer - ceiling is OSB, and I've added a layer of chipboard and caulked. I finished off tanking the whole garage with thoroseal, and began building the 4 x 2 frame (pic 2). I decided against rendering the inside of the garage as I dont feel I 'need' to do this, especially if I'm going to render the outside in the summer. I then secured isowool into the framing and started adding plasterboard in a variety of alternate overlapping ways. I have a few more days of this to go (doing a few hours each evening) and I'm aiming for 3 layers. My next problem will be the floor - I'm still a little undecided about how to approach this. I'd like to batten iover the existing floor placing a decoupling material between the battens and the concrete floor, isowool in betweent he framing, lay chipboard over that and then put a laminate flooring on top. I have 2 questions: 1: What would be suitably effective decoupling material to use? I was going to get some thick, ribbed rubber matting and cut that into squares, placing it under key joints in the battening. Not so sure this will be effective, but my budget is small and I dont think I'd strech to a Elastomer type product. 2: I'm assuming I need to keep the floor edges away from touching the existing walls. How do I do this whilest avoiding an unsightly gap all around the floor? I'm still not sure what to do with the side of the frame that the door is on.... Will bother you all with that one another night.. Cheers! James

James, from your pics I’m only seeing a single wall frame where the door is; is this your plan, or will you be adding a second frame and door to make the entire structure a m-a-m construct? Ceiling - what’s your intent there; resilient suspended from outer joists, or separate inner frame rested on inner walls? If the first one, is your roof strong enough? Usually a floated floor is done with the inner walls resting ON TOP of the floor, so the wall gets floated also; then, the inner ceiling gets supported on these floated walls, making the entire thing isolated from any hard contact with the outer mass leaf. Whether or not you float the walls though, you should use what’s called a Perimeter Isolation Board; typically made of Homosote/Celotex, because the softer material keeps transference to a minimum should the inner structure shift enough to cause contact with the outer shell. You could also use VERY dense rockwool, like 8 PCF or greater. Have you read the first couple pages of Aaron’s thread on floating floors? It’s in the REFERENCE section, and I explained how to calculate deflection of unknown materials there. Depending on how close other people are, and how much noise you intend to make, you may want to NOT float your floor at all - in fact, if you plan ahead you could wait til you see if it’s even necessary and if so, build a floated floor after all the rest is done - no need to waste time/money if it’s not needed… Steve

Hi Steve The side where the door goes is still undecided. Its the only side of the frame that hasn't got existing concrete / brick wall behind it. I may build another stud wall in front of it, or alternatively just put another 4 layers of plaster board on the outside of the frame hung on resilient channel. The door would then be the only single leaf - I could maybe put another fire door on the inside of the frame (the existing door is on the outside - will post latest photo when I get home on Sunday). The ceiling is nopw almost complete - the inner leaf is 3 x plaster board hung from the underside of the joists coming off the sides of my seperate 4 x 2 frame (see 3rd pic - you can see the new frame battons going in a different direction to the existing ceiling battons above it). The outer leaf is the existing ceiling (OSB with a layer of chipboard fixed to it). I will read Aarons thread on Sunday and have a think about the floor situation, but I have bought some "accoustifix" battons from sheffield insulation here in the UK which was a cheap and cheerful option.... Cheers James

You do NOT want to try putting four layers of drywall on RC; three is pushing it. it's cheaper and better to do a separate frame - that increases the air gap, makes everything easier to do, and gives you a chance to do double doors so the door isn't as much of a weak link... Steve

Due to a bout of 'man flu' I have had to slow down this week - not sure if you get it in the States but its essentially a common cold, but if you are a man, it hits you particularly hard - much worse than a woman would get it :) Have completed 3 layers on the ceiling and 2 on all of the walls apart from the wall with the doorway in. I'm having to leave that until the end in order to make life easier getting the plasterboard in to the booth. The door is on. This will be the innermost door if I build an extra wall. Steve, I'm thinking of continuing as if I'm going to do an extra wall and door, and see how good the sound insulation is at that point. I'm not sure I'll need to build the extra wall and I'm keen to avoid this if I can. It will take up another couple of feet of the remaining garage space, and aside from that the floor gets very uneven just outside of the current frame and I think it would be quite difficult for me to construct an extra wall well. I wanted to prioritise improving the existing walls in the remaining garage space. I thought I could possibly leave the booth with just one door (perhaps boulstered up with extra plasterboard attached, etc) and hang 2 layers of plasterboard on the outside of the frame on resilient channel. What do you think? Or how about a second door on the existing frame (placed on the inside I have taken a pic of the deltafix acoustic partitioning batten, which I'm planning to use. I doubt the insulation will be great but I wanted to use something in order to raise / level the floor a little. I've got a week of snowboarding in France to look forward to as from 20th Feb, so a break from the box building will be most welcome Cheers James

Hello all, I've been quietly getting on with things over the past few months, and here's where I'm at: The inner room is now complete, but I still have the outer leaf for one side of the room to construct. I'm planning to see how well the room insulates before I decide how I'm going to do this. If I've got the degree of sound insulation I need I may just attach gypsum to the outside of the existing frame. If not, I'll build a new wall running parallel to the existing one. Anyway, now that the inside is finished, painted and the floor is layed, I want to start attaching the acoustic tiles and place the bass traps in the optimum position. The bass traps were described as: "Ex demo, never installled famous brand Professional bass traps and cubes. Products are manufactured from 65Kg/3 combustion modified (fire and furnishings approved) specialist acoustic foam. Not to be confused with everyday 20/25Kg so called acoustic foam, these babies offer effective low frequency absorption below 40hz. they are the highest performing foam bass traps you can buy. BASS TRAPS x2 measure 600x300x300mm each. CUBES x2 measure 300x300mm each. COLOUR - Metallic Purple." And the acoustic tiles: "PRO Grade Acoustic Tiles: Foam Specification Each Kit of PRO Grade contains 72 tiles. Each tile is 15” (381mm) x 15” (381mm). We will also throw in a free tin of adhesive. All of our acoustic treatment is Charcoal Grey. Each pack will cover 112 ½ square feet (10.44sqm). The NRC rating is 0.49 Nominal Tensile Strength: 70 kPa Minimum. Nominal Elongation At Break: 150% Minimum. Nominal Compression Set: 12% Maximum. The foam will pass FVMSS 302 flamability test. The density of the foam is 33kg/m3. The hardness is 150 Newton’s. The profile of the tiles are egg crate and are 25mm at the base and 50mm at the peak. Each kit is £190.00." Anyway, now that I've got all of these tiles and bass traps / cubes, I'm wondering what the most effective way of placing them is, bearing in mind that I really haven't got much of a clue about any of this at all. I was just going to stick them around the room in such a way as to make the room look nice (!!) but I'm guessing that this perhaps isn't the best thing to do! Given that I'm not looking for a pro sounding studio and haven't got the time or inclination to work any technical stuff out, could anyone give some pointers as to how I could generally position the tiles to get the best out of them? Size of the room is: Height: 199cm Front wall (where the mirror is): 273cm Left wall (to left of mirror): 244cm Right wall: 226cm Back wall (opposite mirrored wall, where door is): 345cm Obviously, as can be seen from measurements the room is an odd shape with none of the corners being 90 degrees. Any tips would be most appreciated :) James

I deleted your question in Acoustics since all the pix are here; you don't seem to have looked very far for info on acoustic treatment yet, I understand you're wanting results quickly but everyone gets tired of typing the same things over and over - I'll do a quick run-through, then you can read a few dozen threads so it makes more sense :? The triangle shaped pieces are "bass traps", also called corner traps - they go in the corners :wink: preferably floor to ceiling in all corners possible. They can also be adhered to wall-ceiling corners if you have enough. If you'll be recording your drums (or not) you'll want some of the flatter foam on the ceiling - some kind of lightweight metal frame hung over the kit can work here - here's one method http://www.recording.org/ftopict-26889.html Next step is treatment for flutter echo between parallel walls - place 2'x2' pieces of the foam on one wall, direcly opposite should be bare wall. Repeat randomly til you're happy with the sound. (This may never happen; that thin foam won't absorb nearly as low frequencies as thicker mineral wool will, so the sound will likely be a bit "boxy" - the "fix" for this is thicker, more absorbent material and deeper, wider corner traps. If you have any intention of keeping your drums from being heard outside the room, you WILL be adding a second frame and couple more layers of wallboard and a second door... Steve