Studio wall detail

Jas · Post by **Jas** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 5:28 pm

Hi all,
I am currently designing a small to medium sized studio -(that I am going to start building shortly) and have a few questions about my wall construction.
I don't have pics yet so I'll give an outline-
The space is about 100m2 -control room is roughly 30m2, studio area is the rest. Building will consist of concrete slab floor, 190mm (8") concrete block walls about 2.8m high with a pretty standard gal iron, gable roof (200 x 50 rafters etc.) sitting on the block wall. Roof extends to about 4.5 m in centre. The main studio area is about 9.5 x 7m. I was going to float the internal floor(s) on rubber pads, pine studs 90 x 45 on end with two layers of t&g chipboard flooring sheets, one layer 10mm plaster in between them. On this floor, I'm planning perimeter internal pine stud walls (90x45) about 30mm away from blocks with 25mm MDF and 2 layers 16mm firestop plaster (all on internal side of frame with rock wool behind). With the ceiling I was planning on sealing off the gal roof by screw and glueing MDF/plaster on the roof battens in between the rafters and then run RC directly on the bottom of the rafters and hang two layers of fire rated plaster then fill the gap -(about 200mm) with insulation.
What I'm not clear on is how I should seal off the gap between the block wall and the internal (floated) wall at the top. This would be about a 30mm gap. Obviously I don't want to couple the inner wall to the blockwork, so maybe rubber? or timber to make the gap smaller first then cork or rubber?
I'm also not exactly sure how best to fasten the inner wall. Fine to glue and screw it to the Floated floor, but at 2.7m high will need some support at the top without touching the external structure or the ceiling? I was going to run the wall up close to the ceiling and seal the gap there with caulk.
Any suggestions on would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

dymaxian · Post by **dymaxian** » Sat May 01, 2004 12:39 am

If you're going to all this trouble to float the internal floor and build the walls up off of that, why not just build the internal ceiling off the internal walls? This would effectively "float" the entire room, keeping it structurally isolated from the rest of the structure.

It was unclear as to whether you'd be floating the individual rooms separate from each other. Depending on how loud you'll be getting in the tracking room, this might not be a bad idea.

Even if you just float the tracking room, and build the control room right on the concrete floor, you'll get plenty of isolation from the outside. The tracking room is where you'll need it most. And keeping the floor structures isolated from each other will keep low freq sound from getting thru the structure from one room to another.

It's more complicated to build, and it means doubling all the walls (and then keeping the ceiling structures separated from each other), but it sounds like you're going a long way to get this place sound isolated from the outside.

If you're not so worried about isolation between rooms, or just want to spare yourself the headache of floating the floors separately from each other, that's not catastrophic or anything. I'd still build a separate ceiling structure off the interior walls, tho. This would give you total isolation from the outside building shell, and let you hang as much drywall as you need to on the ceilings of your control and tracking rooms.

Hope this helps.

Kase
www.minemusic.net

Jas · Post by **Jas** » Sat May 01, 2004 1:26 pm

Thanks dymaxian,
I agree that building isolated ceilings on the walls would be better. The main reason I didn't want to do this was cost! It's alot of extra rafters and another large ridge beam. When you span these kind of distances it ain't cheap! I'll also loose some more ceiling height. I guess it would solve the problem of fastening the top of the walls. I wonder how much it would improve isolation in the low band? ....mmm probably a fair bit now that I think about it.

I was planning on floating both floors separately anyway so the wall design would stay largely the same but i'll have to look at this ceiling issue and see how much more it would cost. If I took your advice and built the ceiling on the walls, I could probably save a bit by not using RC up there as it wouldn't be that necessary.
cheers

Sen · Post by **Sen** » Sun May 02, 2004 7:51 pm

Jas, that's actually a good question now that I think about it. I'm coming close to that stage of construction and wouldn't mind reading a few insights on this issue. I guess you'll always have to "short" the rooms somewhere, but it could be possible to have them completely isolated..I dunno..Steve, what's your view on this??

Thanks

P.S. Jas, is your roof steel constructed (all the "I" beam business and that)? Who did it for you? I'm looking for a contractor to weld all my construction and erect it. Just asking since we seem to be from the same town. cheers

Jas · Post by **Jas** » Mon May 03, 2004 12:38 am

Hi Sen,
Actually I prefer to use timber only if I can help it. I used to be a chipie' so I do all the work myself. With my above outlined design i'll use a heavey ridge beam and rafters. The ridge is the large beam right at the top of the apex, then all the rafters slope down to the top off the walls from there. It's old school design, but it works well and looks nice. battens and steel deck go on top -(Maybe Colourbond) ...you get the idea.

cheers

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon May 03, 2004 3:02 am

Here are some random thoughts on isolation - some DIY, some not -

A DIY bracket I drew for Aaron in Tennessee -

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... &start=165

One manufacturer of commercial isolation products -

http://www.kineticsnoise.com/architectural/index.html

Another commercial outfit, CAD details of some of their offerings -

http://www.masonanaheim.com/a/a102a.htm

These won't help much unless you have a means of viewing autocad's .DWG format - there are a few drawing programs that are reasonably priced that do this, among them Turbocad and Autodesk's own entry level QuickCad, both under $50 USD.

Basically, you either need money or a way to fab your own steel/neoprene mounts, although there are ways to use wood and neoprene as well - if you're not handy with the "mad inventor" persona, I can help with specific situations but will need some kind of preliminary drawing/picture of the specific situation.

Soundproofing ceilings/roofs is one of the trickier parts of this endeavor - again, pix or drawings are almost mandatory. With the nice weather coming on, I have very little time to draw so anything you can draw will be much faster, then I can make suggestions.

For larger spans, some type of mid-span support with isolation is usually necessary - kinetics offer a few of these, helpful for ideas at least. One item is their hanging isolator designed for inserting into tie wires.

I can't write a complete book on this, when I get that far it won't be free - meantime, I'll be glad to look at any of your ideas and comment... Steve

Jas · Post by **Jas** » Tue May 04, 2004 3:14 pm

Thanks for the links and info Steve.

I'll post some drawings soon.
Cheers