My loft drumbooth project...

Hi, this is my first post so I might as well introduce myself. My name is Guy and i'm a drummer in a death metal band called Infectus (hence the screen name). I live in southwest England, which due to its sardine-packed demographic nature is a very hard place for drummers! Which brings me onto...... The problem- Death metal drumming is pretty loud and busy stuff, so living at home practicing on a real kit is not an option. After 6 years of playing on silent practice pads (appart from a couple of hours a week at band practice) i've got to the point where the only way to get better is to practice on a REAL kit. The solution (?)- OK here's my plan. Although i live at home, i recently bought a house with my brother which i'm ripping appart and doing up. It consists of a garage/workshop downstairs, 2 bedroom bungalow above that, then above that there is a loft. At first i thought i was doomed to even more practice pad self-torture, but having got up in the loft and seeing the size of it it's got me thinking. :idea: As a picture is worth 1000 words so to give you an idea of what i'm working with i've attached a photo and a plan of the room (the truss being on the 5 metre side and the stone wall being on the 5.8 metre side). The two uprights of the truss are looking like the perfect place for a door, the loft hatch will be in the end where the photo was taken from. The far wall is stone and it's 2 foot think (converted dairy built in about 1820!), but there are flats the other side (lets hope it's only their bathroom! :wink: ) Would a stud wall be still worth putting up that end? Budget wise i'm thinking about £500 ($1000), though at the end of the day i'd pretty much pay anything for a successful end result <- Priceless! :) I'm thinking about running Cat5 up there to remotely run my pc (in bedroom under where photo was taken) with a small flatscreen monitor, keyboard and mouse. Also thinking about routing an XLR loom for recording purposes. I'm probably gonna need an aircon unit of some sort too, you'd be surprised how much heat a death metal drummer can give off! :lol: I've ready through the floating floor thread but it wasn't really what i was expecting. My initial idea was to have my kit up on a riser frame that was supported by a number of metal spikes in female metal cups, a bit like some HiFi speakers. The idea was to reduce the amount of vibration through the floor from my bass drum pedals. Has anyone ever proven anything like this, or should i put myself up as guinea pig! :lol: As far as the walls go i'm not sure what direction i should be going in, i've seen all this talk about 703 fibre sheeting but of course it is not available in the UK. Without ever seeing the stuff though, it's gonna make things hard to find an alternative. Or is that stuff too fancy for what i'm after? Should i be just thinking about plasterboarding with foam insulation behind and fixing spikey foam up. One last question, i've heard great things here about this book- http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1598630342/ref=pe_snp_342 Will it be of any use to me? Is its content "overkill" seeing as i'm building a soundproof booth rather than a studio. Also, might suggested building material availability to the UK be an issue. Thanks for any help anyone can give me, Guy

Hey boss, good to see ya here. I think that you may find that building anything in your attic area is going to prove to be a poor idea. Not much of anything existing can be moved without special instruction, special permission and trained yahoos to move it, IF it can be moved:) It will be most difficult to get the counter-levered beam resting on the girder to be moved simply because it has a function. And in order to remove it, there will need to be something of sufficient and most likely engineered strength to replace it. Your £500 ($1000) plus, just got used up. And there are so many other concerns. The extra weight alone in building material is an issue in trying to develop this area into anything other than what it is. Building a wall, hanging sheetrock and running a caulkgun is one thing. Retro fitting a room into an attic/loft area without proper experience, supervision and knowledge is a potential structure failure waiting to happen. What happened to the garage/workshop downstairs area? This is usually where many others begin and have a successful build. I wish ya luck,

For sure that support beam (with the stud that goes down to the garage ceiling) is gonna need some work, im going to be using a second metal support stud (under tension) that will run through the first floor hallway stud wall, then move the current one into the kitchen stud wall. Its a bit complicated to explain without pics, but i've got it all in hand. I'm doing this reenforcing work anyway so my £500 was literally focused on boarding and soundproofing the booth. It wasn't even budgeting for the xlr loom and cat5, not that it will cost much anyway.The two upper ceiling joists that run from the truss to the backwall are going to be double braced using taller timber. Luckily being an engineer i fully understand the stresses inlvolved and am always willing to spend a little extra for some good old british over-engineering! :lol: Extra-luckily my Dad (who's built houses before and is a carpentry lecturer) is also helping out on this one, so we hopefully shouldn't be seeing any elevator-drumkits! The garage downstairs would be the best potential place for it, but garages are for one thing and one thing only - cars! :wink: With no outdoor parking its gotta be used for keeping/working on cars (my brother and i have a few between us!), but it also has run-off water leak problems which may take a while to get to the bottom of. So it really leaves me with the one option i'm planning here, i'd be mad not to at least try. So this book, is it what i'm looking for? Thanks, Guy

I wouldn't know.

Guy – Merry Christmas to you and yours, mate, and welcome to the forum. I’ve read your opening post five times, and Brian’s response, and have waited until now to see if anyone else would chime in. So, although I’ve only been up here officially for a year, for my ‘two quid’ here’s what I think: :oops: You’re an engineer – cool! 8) Your Dad’s a carpentry lecturer – even cooler! (Post his number!) 8) 8) You want to soundproof your loft area so that you can practice death metal drumming. OK, but, in all honesty Guy, I really don’t see how that could happen. I have to concur with Brien on this one. You’d need so much material (so much weight! So much budget!) I just don’t think it would be practical. :shock: Now, I’ve thought about this reply for a couple of days so, as far as your budget is concerned, its good for others on this forum to know what sort of cash you have to play with (so they can tailor any responses to suit what’s available to you), but nobody’s going to be judging you on the size of your wallet! In short, dude, it doesn’t matter whether you have £1,000 or £100,000 the whole essence of this forum is to help you get the best you can from what you’ve got and what you can get hold of. I’m not in any way trying to be negative, or put the dampers on your ideas but, in order for you to be happy at this time, I just get the feeling that you really need to sit down and prioritise your wishes – cars or drums? :?: :?: :?: It’s a tough call my friend and although you suggest that you’d be mad not to at least try, I ………………..well, ………..I think you know now where I’m coming from. :wink: Please understand that I’m so trying to be positive for you. On to what seems to be a pressing question for you. “Do I need this book?” Well, you wonder if it might be ‘overkill’ given that all you’re trying to do is soundproof a loft area and not build a studio – Dude, for me at least, the two are one and the same thing, albeit with a different number of rooms, wiring, visual communication, blah blah. Except, that you’re about to try to soundproof an area that’s almost impossible to do. (The only 'truly soundproof' environment known to man is a vacuum, or outer space, I think). “Correct me away oh learned ones!” :oops: :oops: I bought 'the book' in August 2006 and I found it unbelievably helpful. It totally changed some of my ridiculous conceptual ideas of what was required to build an effective playing, listening and recording environment, and I’ve worked professionally in such environments for 20 years. There is a mine of information to be absorbed at any level as far as you wish to delve. For example, are you aware of your BTU output in a certain volume of space, after a given time of playing your drums? No wonder musicians are generally fit – especially drummers. :lol: :wink: :lol: If I had one constructive thing to say about 'the book' from your point of view, it would simply be to ask you to accept that the author has spent his life designing and building studios all over the globe. Like John, he really knows his stuff but, you have to also accept, IMHO, that when he wrote it, he probably didn’t think it was going to be quite so successful, and have such an influence on that global scale. By that I simply mean that it was (I feel) written from the heart, for a primarily American market, and sometimes the English becomes a little abstract for us UK’ers! :wink: Having said that, the linguistic differences aren’t really a problem and said tome will only cost you around £25.00 delivered! That still leaves £975.00 for your build! :D Good luck my friend – I’d say “buy the Goddamn book!” It’ll save you some of the £££’s you’ll eventually spend! All materials mentioned (or equivalents) are readily available in the UK - Even Green Glue! Warmest regards, Lou. 8)

Thanks Lou, i'm glad you answered. Being a death metal drummer ( :shock: ) and english ( :lol: ) i guessed it would take one or the other to reply! :wink: Having looked through this site a lot more, I think the only thing that i'm NOT being realistic about is the amount of sound insulation i'm going to have (or not have!). At worst this means i would only be able to play restricted hours, i guess the more rockwool i can get up there the better! :wink: I think the best thing to do is get a sheet of ply up there and test things out "as is" with my jazz kit setup, then have a walk around outside to see how it sounds. At very worst i'm only going to waste time, if it doesn't work out any building materials can be reused elsewhere in the house as it's being totally gutted. I'm probably going to end up using rockwoll in one of the joining walls with the house nextdoor. Its crazy, there's 2 foot of solid stone wall at the drumbooth end but only one redbrick thickness at the other end! :roll: "cars or drums?"- Very much a "daddy or chips" subject (you've probably seen the advert) for me! :? Thing is, i've spent too many hours underneath a car out in the pouring rain (even welded the underside of my van in snow!) and that's something i've never had to do with the drums. At least now they can both be indoor sports! :wink: Or put it this way, if you had one of these- gulp with their repution would you leave it out in the rain! :lol: (I think you have to be european to 1)know what that upturned skip even is and 2) understand the joke!) You can get Green Glue over here?!?!? ohhh just found greenglue.co.uk :shock: I think i shall buy the book..... :wink: Guy

(I think you have to be european to 1)know what that upturned skip even is and 2) understand the joke!)

I'm a big fan of a good joke.

FOR SALE: 1 SKODA-LOVINGLY CHERISHED. Any offers? :lol: :lol: :wink: Lou. 8)