Hi everyone.
I've been reading this site for a while now but haven't posted as things weren't quite ready. Seeing how I have the wife on board (finally!) I can now start making some headway in the planning dept.
Lots of info here. It's quite hard to remember every little thing I've read.
With that being said, here is what I'd like to accomplish:
-A soundproofed practice studio (that isn't permanent) for a loud rock band. I haven't bought a sound meter yet but I would estimate that we are very near painful levels at our loudest (120+ db?). The reason for the non-permanence would be for re-sale value alone. (Someone might want to put a car in that garage someday). We usually practice at night (after 9pm).
-I have neighbors on both sides of me but the back of the garage faces a cemetary. The neighbors are probably about 40' away at the farthest and 25' at the closest.
The dimensions of the garage are:
-a 22' X 20' X ~9' (LxWxH) (~ means approximate but you probably knew that)
-the garage attic is about 6' tall at it's height
-It rests on a concrete slab.
Here are some pictures:
Front of garage:
In regards to budget, obviously, the least expensive but most efficient/effective would be best. Let's say $5000 right now.
I have been reading about HVAC though and realize that could inflate the price greatly.
Here are my questions (at least the ones for right now):
1) Would my best bet for floating the floor be to get it as high as possible off the ground? This sacrifices headroom, no?
2) In regards to a ceiling, I'm still unclear as to how to accomplish this without a beam in the middle of the room to prevent bowing/sagging of the multi-layers of drywall.
3) From looking at the inside walls as they are, could I get away with using them as one leaf? Seems I would have to caulk all of the cracks/imperfections and then layer drywall between studs? I have a feeling like this wouldn't be the best way, however.
4) If I were to build one leaf on top of a floated floor, would the second, outer leaf be built on top of the existing slab? This confuses me (obviously).
5) Would it be cheaper to demo this and do it with concrete blocks?
6) What software are people using to sketch up such nice, tidy diagrams?
Perhaps someone has a nice, clean link of a project similar to mine in necessity and budget? Feel free to send it my way.
Thanks. This is a great forum.
Edited to add a question.
I'm only slightly bumping this just to see if I can get an answer to a specific question.
(I realize my "laundry list" of questions will not be for the faint of heart.)
Anyway......
In regards to this picture of my wall:
What would be the best way to treat this?
Would caulking the cracks and then applying 2 layers of drywall help?
My plan is to make a room within a room but I'm just wondering if the caulk and drywall on this specific wall will offer any "help" at all.
Thanks.
Aloha and welcome to the forum, Aaron :D
Congrats on your build! Glad to hear that your wife is on board as well.
Since no one else has chimed in yet, may I offer a few thoughts on your project?
A soundproofed practice studio (that isn't permanent) for a loud rock band.
You are right. Your list is not for the faint at heart! To the best of my understanding, it appears that "soundproofed" and "not permanent" are not compatible. In the principle outlined on the forum to accomplish "soundproofed," it requires mass-air-mass (and lots of it) and a well executed construction (as in a screw - not to mention more often than not, several) in the wrong place can defeat the whole exercise. :shock: This usually results in a very heavy, airtight structure, which so far has not been accomplished by anything that could be considered "non-permanent."
Given that understanding, it may require one to re-assess the expectations one might hope to accomplish. Which of the two is more important - soundproofed or temporary - and amiable relations with neighbors/local law enforcement or not? :roll:
Here's a couple of attachments on the STC charts available here to give you an idea of what the construction looks like.
STC Chart in left tab:
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.htmlhttp://www.stcratings.com/assemblies.html#01
Similar "beef up" projects:
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2921http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3876
Hope these help,
Aloha 8)
i would not bother caulking those existing cracks in the exterior. if you add 2 well caulked layers of drywall it will be airtight, and airtight is airtight.
it is possible to un-do anything pretty much isn't it? i mean you can seal up the garage door and then un-seal it later. what i have done in my project is permanently ruin my garage door. if the garage ever needs to be a garage again, then a new garage door will be purchased, which would be around $1000 give or take. also a lot of interior walls would be demolished of course.
i don't think it would be that hard to un-do. of course the hard part would be emotional, not practical. seeing all that money and work thrown away ...
i wouldn't bother floating the floor. unless each leaf of your walls and ceiling is 3 inches thick of gypsum it probably won't help at all.
Wow.
I just looked at the codes for my town. STRICT-CITY!
"For sound sources located within the City, the maximum permissible sound levels are as follows:
Residential [that's me]: 55db(A)"
Also, there's this:
"Between the hours of 10:00 pm and 7:00 am during weekdays, and between the hours of 10 pm and 8 am on weekends and State-recognized holidays, the levels established by TMC 8.22.040 [that's the one above] are reduced by 10 db(A) where the receiving property lies within a residential district of the City."
That means I've got to bring it down to about 45db(A)!!! As we practice at 9 pm-11 pm or so.
For what it's worth, I've just ordered a meter from Radio Shack but I'm willing to bet that my 3 piece band is about 120-125 dbs.
Will it be possible to bring our levels down by 80 db?
Anything's possible. But I don't think you're at 120db. A typical rock concert is at that volume in the front row and you'd need some hefty gear to produce that level. But, even if you are at that volume, I bet you could bring the volume outside to 45db. But I do have a question about that, is it 45db at the road? Or 10 feet from the house? It makes a huge difference.
The noise police will take there readings at your boundary(s).
We have about the same code here in New Zealand and I was surprised to find when I brought a noise meter that the ambiant noise outside in my neighbourhood is about 55db yet the code says I can't be louder than 45db.
45db is not that loud, you would be surprised!!
Thanks
JohnG
I'll kind of repeat what John just said:
When the police are called the sound level reading they will take will be at you property line(s). Depending (if there in a bad mood) they can take levels at any one of your property lines.
I make most of my living playing "blue collar" gigs... that's pubs, clubs, bars, poolside, weddings etc... I've been sound level checked many, many times by the police or by concerned club owners predicting a complaint will be called in.
55-60db at property line is typical by law. With a sound meter on "A" weight you can get that reading with out playing any music if there is a busy street or other normal noise in the area. You may be able to "cheat" a bit if at the late hours the ambient noise is louder then 45db... but that also depends on the temperament and sound knowledge or ignorance of your neighbors.
When you get your sound meter "play with it" and you'll get a much more realistic idea of how much sound proofing you may need. I think -80db is bit of an over shot.
120db is really, really loud. I measured one of my loudest live groups and on "C" weight (higher bass sensitivity then "A" weight) we only peaked at 105db at back of the room... average was 95-100.
Good luck.
Well, I just received my sound level meter by fedex today.
I'll finally be able to measure how loud we really are!
First things first, however..........
In regards to this wall (which is how all of my walls are, currently):
Or, like the picture below which just uses the existing beefed-up wall with another leaf built with a gap between them (surrounding the whole rehearsal area)?
Sorry my pictures are so horrible. I'm no Sharward. ;-)
Incidentally, I'm on page 31 of that thread. It's taken me about a week to get that far. Like a suspense thriller!!
Thanks for any advice, everyone.
Aloha Aaron,
Version 2 is closer to what you want. Be sure to caulk all edges/gaps/layers and stagger your seams. Also, if you are planning a vapor barrier, I believe Knightfly recommends that
the vapor barrier should be toward the side that is warmest most of the time; so in Florida, the vapor barrier goes toward the outside - in New England, vapor barriers go to the inside, just under the first layer of drywall. http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... &start=120
6 posts down the page
Whenever possible, try to avoid version 1, which is often referred to as a 3 leaf wall.
By the way, while none of us are in the Sharward level of graphics, your pictures are fine. They communicated what you needed, and that's what important, eh? :wink:
Aloha 8)
OK.
I measured our volume last night.
At our loudest we're 126 db (c weighting, of course). That means I'll have to knock our volume down with 80 stc, correct?
I'm starting to realize what I'm up against, both structurally and sound-wise. I suppose that's the first step...........
I've even drawn up a little plan that might give everyone an idea of what I have in my head.
Feel free to send ANY advice my way. I could use it!
I will say, however, that just reading Sharward's thread has sorted things in my head a bit and that's good. That guy's a stallion.
Anyway, here's my plan. Feel free to mark it up, nip, tuck, whatever. I'm just getting started.
Thanks, all.
EDIT: Oops. I just realized that I didn't add the second leaf on my picture. That was stupid. Please imagine that it's there. I'll try to make a better picture once I eat dinner. I'm blaming it on low blood sugar.
I have to take exception to Dan's comment here - "i would not bother caulking those existing cracks in the exterior. if you add 2 well caulked layers of drywall it will be airtight, and airtight is airtight."
If you do NOT seal up that outer wall before adding the gypsum inserts, you've just given away 3/4" of wood mass that's about equal to another layer of 1/2" drywall for your outer leaf. Yours is probably the LAST case where that would be a good idea.
You need to also check SPL's with "A" weighting - the difference in the two readings will help you learn how much of your sound is LOW frequency, which will require wider air gaps, more mass, etc, to bring under control.
If that 126 dB is at 50 hZ, since the threshold of human hearing at that frequency is around 55 dB you'll need about 70 dB of TL at 50 hZ - Not gonna happen in any retrofit, and definitely not "temporary".
More like 12" concrete, 24" air space and 4 layers of 5/8 drywall, with a super-ceiling that can keep up with that (oh, and a floated floor with the inner walls resting on it)
Not trying to burst your bubble so much as to keep you from being disappointed... Steve
Thanks for the reply, Steve.
Let's all forget that I ever mentioned the word "temporary". Obviously, that's not an option.
In regards to the floated floor.........what if I were to cut out "channels" in the concrete floor near the walls? I'm not exactly sure what I'd fill them with? But that would indeed reduce flanking, correct?
Steve, your suggestions regarding the concrete walls aren't a bad idea and are not discouraging in any way. To be totally honest, this is the kind of feedback I need. Like I said, we are a loud band. What needs to be needs to be.
Thanks.
The problem with cutting slabs in an effort to isolate them -- something I considered briefly before being read the riot act by Rod the construction engineer -- is that you would then be putting a lot of weight on the edge of a cut slab, as opposed to a footing that is deeper and stronger. You also run the risk of settling.
See this thread, which was instrumental in my decision to extract and replace my slab.
I'm not saying you need to do the same thing that I am doing... But you'll at least see some of why I decided to do so.
Do you have acreage that could accommodate a new building? If so, and you can afford to make that kind of investment, that's what I would recommend.
You may also want to review Mike Klooster's project, which is also a detached garage conversion. It has gone a bit dormant because his life has required his taking attention off of his project... But you can learn a lot from the challenges he has faced (and is still facing).
--Keith :mrgreen:
Steve, i thought the only reason to caulk each layer is for redundancy, not theoretically needed ... didn't Keith go thru a similar problem ... i believe he decided not to caulk every layer on his beef for this reason.
is it because it's the last layer that makes the difference?
I have to take exception to Dan's comment here - "i would not bother caulking those existing cracks in the exterior. if you add 2 well caulked layers of drywall it will be airtight, and airtight is airtight."
If you do NOT seal up that outer wall before adding the gypsum inserts, you've just given away 3/4" of wood mass that's about equal to another layer of 1/2" drywall for your outer leaf. Yours is probably the LAST case where that would be a good idea.
You need to also check SPL's with "A" weighting - the difference in the two readings will help you learn how much of your sound is LOW frequency, which will require wider air gaps, more mass, etc, to bring under control.
If that 126 dB is at 50 hZ, since the threshold of human hearing at that frequency is around 55 dB you'll need about 70 dB of TL at 50 hZ - Not gonna happen in any retrofit, and definitely not "temporary".
More like 12" concrete, 24" air space and 4 layers of 5/8 drywall, with a super-ceiling that can keep up with that (oh, and a floated floor with the inner walls resting on it)
Not trying to burst your bubble so much as to keep you from being disappointed... Steve
So, by mentioning the 12" of concrete, I'm assuming you mean a concrete wall 12" thick?
Would the best way to do this be concrete blocks? I'm a bit confused. Thanks.
Yes, that's what I meant - only solid concrete. In order to completely stop high levels of low frequency sound you need to REALLY utilize the mass-air-mass principle - increasing ANY of the components will help isolation by lowering the resonance of the structure. Ideally, you want this resonance to be at least an octave and a half below the lowest frequency you want to contain, so for a full-spectrum barrier the m-a-m frequency needs to be below 10 hZ; preferably below 7 hZ, but that's nearly impossible for any affordable construction.
If you're limited on the amount of mass you can afford, you can help things out somewhat by increasing the air gap. This can be fairly practical if you're starting from scratch and have the space to make your building about 4 feet larger on a side than you need for inside space - you just make a wide air gap and two seriously heavy wall leaves.
Probably the most practical way of doing this would be to use 8x8x16" hollow concrete blocks for the outer shell - this can be done either by an experienced mason in the normal, mortar each block method, or by a newer method called by either "dry stack block" or "surface-bonded block" construction. A Google search on those two terms will bring up several links for better understanding.
Either way, all block cavities not already filled with grout/concrete during the wall construction, will need to be filled with dry sand before the roof goes on; inner walls can be placed 24" inside the outer block wall, built with standard stud construction, and 3 or more layers of drywall placed on one side of the frame; this gives a wall that is 2 leaf, with enough mass and air space to achieve 14 hZ resonance, so good isolation from about 30 hZ upward.
The trick would then be to equal that performance with the ceiling, which will be harder by far; one way to approach this is really tall outer walls, so you have enough room to put a massive inner ceiling frame, one that will support 3 or 4 layers of drywall, and enough air space above that to help out the m-a-m formula, and an outer shell that's equally massive.
None of this is cheap, so unless your stated budget is REALLY flexible we may both be wasting our time with this... Steve
This may seem kinda simple but we found one way to lower the volume output and keep the neigbours happy was to turn everything down!!.
Why are you playing/practising at 126db?
Next practice go over to all the amps and turn them down by 1/2, do the same with the vocal PA as well.
Get the drummer to use lighter sticks.
I have this ongoing argument with my brother when recording his tube gtar amp. He has got it into his head that you need to record the amp at 75-100% because it "moves" more air and makes for a better / fuller sound. Total pile of crap if you ask me. He reckons the mic picks up that split second of air movement before the sound that gives heavy gtar that swelling sound. Bollocks I say - just turn it down.
JohnG
the most common reason people crank tube amps is to really push the tubes and speakers--generally you get a more desirable sound this way. ive never heard it sounds better because it moves more air however...
the most common reason people crank tube amps is to really push the tubes and speakers--generally you get a more desirable sound this way. ive never heard it sounds better because it moves more air however...
I'm not sure that the speakers get "pushed" but there is something to be said for causing the distortion in the amplifier itself. This however, can be done with a speaker load (which doesn't generate any noise) and a smaller speaker (or a small sample sent off to the speaker. Also, do you NEED "that sound" when you are practicing? Recording or playing live, ok, you would want it, but for practice I think you can get pretty close to the sound without blowing out the walls.
len
There is, in fact, a "sound" you get pushing the speakers as well as the tubes harder. However, the least painful, and often productive, way to get a monstrous guitar sound is a little tube amp. Vibrochamps, Supros, Princetons - anything in the 5-15 watt catagory get you into big sounds at lower volumes and less issues all around. You get to push the speakers, the tubes and with a decent mic and pre in front of things you'll get a great sound more than likely. I've got a small stockpile of small amps for all occasions and they're great to have around for just these occasions.
My 2 cents.
I'm sure there is "a" sound can get out of speakers that are pushed too hard but my real point was do you HAVE to have that sound when you are practicing?
len
Ahhh. My apologies for not reading that more closely. Agreed x1000. I'm personally a fan of fairly quiet practices and brushes. Then again, I really love my hearing:)
I'M BACK!
I'm now considering tearing down the original garage and starting fresh. Can you say re-fi? (Let's hear it for Seattle's booming housing market!)
I'd like to use concrete blocks and the scissor trusses I've read about on this site.
In order to maximize my STL and space I'll need to come out four (or so) feet on all sides.
Just thinking out loud here, people.
I suppose my first step is to get the design down.
EDIT: Another question: If I were to do this with the concrete walls and adequate M-A-M would anyone still suggest floating a floor? I'd rather not, to tell you the truth.........
If you're starting from scratch (and I do mean scratch) and don't want to mess with floated floors, I'd seriously consider an ISOLATED slab similar to what Sharward's doing - in your case, I'd put up heavy footings for the outer perimeter, use surface bonded block on top of that, fill the block with sand, then pour a separate, monolithic slab inside that perimeter leaving at least 12" of air gap, and use 3 layers of 5/8 sheet rock on 2x6 studs 24" OC for your inner walls. Doors to match, with an airlock large enough to only need one door open at a time.
Of course you'd need to equal that performance with your roof/ceiling (not an easy task) but it's doable if you start out with that goal in mind -
Surface-bonded block info
http://www.quikrete.com/diy/QUIKWALLSur ... ement.htmlhttp://www.thenaturalhome.com/drystackblock.htm
HTH... Steve