New Studio in Georgia, help with design and sliding doors

Hello all, This is the 1st time i'm posting, tho i've read here for a while. I'm in the early stages of designing a new studio. I'm in Warner Robins GA, in the U.S. The studio is in a solid building built around 1908. The walls are about 3 ft thick cement and brick with plaster surfacing. Standard Steel frame and Sheetrock was put up, but from what I can tell there isn't any insulation between the cement wall and the Sheetrock. The dimensions are 63' long x 25' wide x 18' high. There is a drop ceiling installed at 12' with standard acoustical tile. The A/C ducts and Water Sprinkler system are just above this. The floor is Cement as well. The entry area is wood construction with thin plate glass windows that pretty much go from a foot from top to about a foot from the bottom. The front doors leading to the street are wood with full glass. All of this allows a lot of sound into the building from the street. There's not much I can do about that in this historic part of town here in Macon, GA. This used to be a Doctors Office and the interior has been divided into many small examination rooms. My intentions are to keep much of this, since it fits with my needs, but I will be opening up an area in the rear of the space with a dimension of about 21' long x 25' wide. Then i'd subdivide that into a control room, live room and vocal booth. I've bought Rod Gervais book and have been pouring over the details. In fact it just so happens that his reference design on page 232 (fig. 10.5) is exactly what i'm going to do in my studio. My question is i've seen many studios use the dual sliding glass doors and I think i'd like to use them to go from the control room into the live room. Is there some special type of glass door that people are using? What kind of STC could I expect from a double glass door arrangement as is often depicted like at the SAE site. Any suggestions on the layout would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help. Macboy SAE plan page I stink at using Sketchup, but here is a basic idea of what the studio would look like:[/url]

I was able to search and found out that Pella has Sliding Glass Patio Doors that can come with laminated glass. The process makes them more impact resistant and of course improves the STC. From their literature it seems that max STC is 35. For the price and availablitily that seems to be decent. Using two of them with an angled wall config, should be fairly decent i would guess. Anyone have any more insight into that arrangement? Is there a better choice, keeping price in the equation? Thanx.

Aloha, Here are a few door links - http://www.overly.com/door/index.cfm?curPage=acoustical http://www.doors-ambico.com/news/wood_doors_stc50.asp http://www.doors-ambico.com/news/pair_door.asp http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/prod ... l_kits.asp http://www.industrialacoustics.com/usa/ ... /index.asp Hope this helps, Aloha 8)

if possible, i'd move the kitchen and bathroom down to the end by the office to avoid putting noise sources into the middle of the live rooms or booths. the top mix room doesn't look like a good shape... if you considering this for commerical use, ADA compliance is a must so plan on proper access to the facility, rest rooms, and where sliders are concerned, residential ones likely aren't going to meet the standard and you'll want to look into commercial types that can recess into the floor and have narrower guides.

Thanks Gulfo. I hadn't even thought about the ADA. I'll make sure that everything meets the standards. As for moving the Kitchen, it's not possible since the plumbing is already in place and i'm not going to be able to move it. I'll have to pay particular attention to those walls I guess. In terms of the Glass Sliding Doors, what brand are people having success using? I've looked at some of the websites suggested, but I didn't seen any Glass sliding doors. The shape of the room is something i'm still struggling with. As I said, I got the basic format from a design in the Rob Gervias book. On page 232. Do you have any suggestions on how to create a good size control room, live room and vocal booth out of a 25' x 21' space?

Hey Folks, I just redid the layout and i'm still not good with Sketchup yet, The file is too big. What should I do to make it smaller and still keep the plan? Thanks.

What the purpose of the studio? Are you mainly doing dance music to hace that many midi rooms? Could these be Studio "B" rooms for mix downs, or small studio's with an attached vocal booth for radio production and tv voice overs. I'd put a chill out room near the main vocal booth and lose 1 midi room. And leave some space between the kitchen and the 2nd studio.

Aloha,

I just redid the layout and I'm still not good with Sketchup yet, The file is too big. What should I do to make it smaller and still keep the plan?

In the tool bar at the top of the page, click on "Window," "Model Info" "Statistics," and "Purged Unused." If it's still to big - WinZip it. http://www.winzip.com/index.htm Hope this helps, Aloha 8)

Mac. if this is for a commercial facility in the US - the sliding glass doors do not meet the ADA requirements for accessibility - and are therefore not code compliant. If this is a personal studio that will never be available to the public - like the typical home studio - then it doesn't matter....... BTW - if clients are going to do business with you - just calling it a personal studio doesn’t change the fact that it's a private facility available for public use according to the requirements of the ADA....... Be aware that should a complaint be made to the ADA and should you be found to be not in compliance - penalties can run to as much as 10,000 per occurrence. Now to explain the problems with the doors themselves......... The ADA establishes a maximum threshold height of 1/2" for interior thresholds....... see here:

4.13.8* Thresholds at Doorways. Thresholds at doorways shall not exceed 3/4 in (19 mm) in height for exterior sliding doors or 1/2 in (13 mm) for other types of doors. Raised thresholds and floor level changes at accessible doorways shall be beveled with a slope no greater than 1:2 (see 4.5.2).

Creating the ramp, dropping the doors so that there is no raised threshold (which I have seen in some studios) creates a separate problem - which is the slot created in the floor - see here:

4.5.2 Changes in Level. Changes in level up to 1/4 in (6 mm) may be vertical and without edge treatment (see Fig. 7(c) ). Changes in level between 1/4 in and 1/2 in (6 mm and 13 mm)shall be beveled with a slope no greater than 1:2 (see Fig. 7(d) ). Changes in level greater than 1/2 in (13 mm) shall be accomplished by means of a ramp that complies with 4.7 or 4.8.

Now the question becomes - at what width does this become a change in level - which is actually answered under the section relating to Gratings:

4.5.4 Gratings. If gratings are located in walking surfaces, then they shall have spaces no greater than 1/2 in (13 mm) wide in one direction (see Fig. 8(g)). If gratings have elongated openings, then they shall be placed so that the long dimension is perpendicular to the dominant direction of travel (see Fig. 8(h)).

So they are looking for a slot a maximum of a 1/2" wide - (or series of slots) for accessibility - and you will have one slightly over 1 3/4" - the establish a maximum depth of 1/4" for no special treatment - from 1/4" to 1/2" sloped leading edges @ a max slope of 1: 2 and (for what you would have - which would exceed 1/2" = a ramp (which is not possible on the fixed side of the doorway....... Anyway - hate to be the bearer of bad news - but this is reality. There are commercial sliding walls that you can create doorways from - and these are legal - (which none of the residential or commercial standard exterior sliding doors are) but these are relatively expensive...... For an example of a code compliant assembly look at the Kawneer 1040 assembly.... http://www.kawneer.com/kawneer/north_am ... od_id=1848 I hope this has helped you. Sincerely, Rod

I want to give a BIG THANK YOU, to all of you who responded to my questions. lilith-envy, what you did with the layout is really cool. Yes there will be a lot of clients doing Hip Hop Beats so i'm catering to that market here in Georgia. I'd hate to lose one of those rooms since it would likely be a popular part of the studio and create a lot of buzz. I'm the only one who has this kind of concept at this point. Still I like what you did with the layout and i'll think about it some more. Kendale thanks for the tips, i'll try them and see what happens. I'm not sure what i did wrong to make the file too large in the 1st place. I'm sure it's something I did, since I don't know much about the program yet. I've been getting better using the tutorials. Rod G. Thanks so much for the info on the ADA stuff. I see now that i'll have to go in another direction. It's not the end of the world. I was just trying to kill 2 birdds with one stone. Having the doors serve as windows would've saved me some trouble and money. By the way your book has been very helpful so far and i highly recommend it to any who haven't yet bought it. i'll write again soon.

I think single wood framed glass hinged doors look much beeter than patio doors anyway.