Planning Container(-ish) studio

I'm looking into converting a container (sort of) into a studio. It's actually a Morgan Dry Freight body used on trucks. Aluminum shell, wood floor, two side doors and full swing-out rear double door, minus the whole truck. It's former life was apparently a work truck for an insulation company. It was obtained by my grandmother for storage while her house was being built. After that I ended up using for storage of household stuff that couldn't move with me. Just recently I've moved the unit a couple hundred yards to the backyard of my place to start going through all the junk that's been sitting in it for a few years and make it a useful shed/workshop/tech bench area basically. My wife has wanted the drumset, loudspeakers, amp rack, etc. out of the living room for qute a while. Especially since they were just taking up space which is rather limited in a place with less than 1000 sq ft and five occupants. On my to-do list is designing/building an addition. :) Anyways, I was browsing to check out options for sound control since now I had a space that I could actually have the drums setup and with being out of playing for so long it would be nice to get back into it. In it's current state it's not really that suitable as even a practice space. I might as well set the drums outside - which may even be better as the resonance from the container probably does a pretty good job at amplifying quite a few frequencies. Then I happened upon this forum and the Spark One container studio that John designed which happens to be almost exactly the same dimensions as my 'shed.' :idea: "Hey!, I just could just go all the way and turn the thing into a studio." I've played around with the idea of setting one up in the past a least a couple times. The main differences from the shipping container being; 1) solid wood floor 2) uninsulated aluminum shell 3) additional doors on the sides. I've done quite a bit of reading and learning over the last week or so. While I have a background that includes architecture (internship prior to going into CAD, then computers), and most aspects of construction (Dad was a GC for a few years, and I completely gutted and refurbed my current home), I've realized that I was ignorant of some details regarding building for sound control even though I've read up on it in the past. There's great info here and I say Kudo's to the Senior Members for sharing it. Now down to a couple questions and general thinking out loud ramblings. :o What I'm thinking of doing is similar to the Spark One design, although without the iso booth, just a single room with the console position all the way in the back. 1.) This container is lined with 3/8 plywood attached to the inside wall members with torx screws. Several of which are so badly rusted that they cannot be removed in the normal manner. :wink: If I go with leaving that plywood in place than with inside-out walls, I think I'm pretty much looking at a third leaf situation. There are gaps and some abuse holes in the panels, a couple which have been filled with foam, but with the air gap and no insulation I would think that this would be really bad WRT sound isolation to begin with on top of the third leaf effect. So I've come up with two ideas for dealing with this. Thoughts, opinions, etc.? A) drill a bunch of holes in the plywood and go crazy with the foam and then caulk, filling the air gap to make it a single leaf and cut the shell resonance down. or B) Remove the plywood completely which will involve some convincing for the rusted screws. Then either simply put fiberglass in the shell frame in contact with the outside wall or mass up the aluminum shell with drywall glued to it between (and maybe up to) the frame members. The one thing this brings up is: 2) The ceiling is a single sheet of aluminum on bowed galvinized channel members about 1-1/2" inches deep (not positive on that measurement). Think hat track, only thicker, curved to give the roof a sort-of-peak and with the rim going to the inside rather than outside. This doesn't seem to be sturdy enough to support much weight and I don't believe it's designed to. The Morgan truck bodies that have plywood ceilings also have a separate support system it appears from browsing their site. So this pretty much rules out adding mass to the ceiling without coming up with some way to support it which would likely reduce available headroom. In any case, the channels themselves end up being mini third leaves which could be insignificant and "have to be lived with" anyway. I think my only option here is to make sure the channels are well caulked to the ceiling and just placing fiberglass against it held up by strapping or otherwise. I think an acorn (or some tree part) fell on the roof when I was in there earlier. :shock: Wow, was it loud and startling! Would something like rubber mat glued to the ceiling be helpful in any way or is fiberglass the best bet? And is it worth adding mass to the walls if the ceiling/roof cannot be beefed up? Currently, I think my main goal is to make the unit suitable to for drum practice. I'm in the middle of the woods and the nearest neighbors are a couple hundred yards away so I'm only worried about disturbing the kids sleeping at night or my wife sleeping during the day. Oh and the wildlife of course. :wink: Don't want to piss off the deer and have them attacking me. :D I've still got highway and train noise on top of the critters to worry about as far as isolation for recording which at some point I'd like to get to though. I don't have the equipment to do much other than maybe demo quality recording right now, much less the room to do it in. :wink: I'm thinking the inside out walls may wait until next spring or so. Well that's all for now, my brain hurts. I'm sure there's more questions I'm forgetting and I could be missing some details. Regards, Tom PS: The forum login timeout tried to get me, but I had already suspected it was going to and beat it by copying my text to clipboard first. :twisted: HAHA, I win! :twisted:

I would remove the plywood so you have a clean interior to work with. on the roof - maybe adding a layer of rubber on top would help with any impact noise you get from things dropping from the trees... the foam if its dense enough would probably help quiet the body down and maybe add some isolation but the biggest win would be air gaps and mass.

after reading all that I find Glenn has already said what I'd say :D - even the rubber ceiling idea. :shock: Get the playground stuff as it's designed to be outside. Beefing up the walls with plaster is a good idea.

So if I understand correctly - rubber on the outside of the roof. Correct? Not adhered to the inside ceiling. I have a couple 3-1/2' (42") rolls of rubber (pretty sure it's plain old rubber - I'll have to double check it). Not sure how long, but quite a bit of it. I was planning on laying it on the existing floor and putting a sub and finish floor over that. But there would still be enough to cover the roof. I'd just have to verify exactly what it is to make sure UV from direct sunlight won't tear it up. I have taken off a sheet of plywood and it's aluminum z channels for the walls (it looked I beam-like with the plywood on). The channels on the one side of the side doors point towards each other and are about 4 inches apart. I don't think I'd be able to get drywall in there. So I'm not sure that it would be worth adding mass for the outer leaf if it can't be done all the way as the weak areas with little/no mass would pretty much make all that work useless. Am I correct in this thinking? If this is the case then I'm thinking of just fiberglass here.

if you can't beef of the exterior walls, then beef up the interior ones... add the fiberglass or foam to dampen the shell and use 3 or 4 layers of drywall (assuming the structure can support it).