big problem - will floating drum room floor help??

mcguin · Post by **mcguin** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:43 am

hi all
I am just finishing a major 3 month (full time) 6 room studio build-out - everything i have done is as good as i could do - 3 layers drywall all seams caulked) on rc on walls and ceilings, double walls with at least 14 inches between - 400 pound doors with lead and serious seals, windows with almost 2 inches of glass (double panes of laminated) and the same minimum 14 inch air space between - AND - tonight we moved the drum kit into the drum room - lots of low frequency sound transmission throughout the studio rooms -

a bit of background -
i am on the 3rd floor of a concrete builing - walls floors and roof - i built on the bare concrete - floated each wall on 1 inch neoprene - all walls isolated from each other - finished flooring throughout is - bare concrete - thin (1/8) foam underlay and 1/4 pergo masnufactured flooring - i am thinking i need to float the floor in the drum room - seems that all the low frequency is transmitting through the floor

WHAT TO DO???

at this point i have spent a small furtune and need to fix this FAST

open for suggestions???

thanks in advance

Dan
Island SoundWorks
US Virgin Islands

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:18 am

So Our understanding is that none of the floors are floated????

That would have been a good thing to do as you are sharing the cement, unless the cement was segmented and physically isolated from the various slabs. So floating the drum room floor is a very good thing to do, HOWEVER, the walls should have been floated on top of that floated floor to isolate them. Basically what you have now is walls in touch with the concrete floor which is transmitting vibrations to all the walls that are attached to that slab/sheet of concrete. Not good for ultimate ISO.

Bryan Giles

mcguin · Post by **mcguin** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:32 am

hi and thanks for the quick reply - the walls are floated on neoprene - so i think (hope) the transmission is only through the floors???

anyway - what would be the best floor float with the minimum loss of vertical space??
thanks again
dan

HopelessRomance · Post by **HopelessRomance** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:43 pm

well take 2X4's lay them flat with 1/2" 60 duro neoprene, and build a floor. but, what bryan was saying, is that you should have built the floated walls on TOP of the floated floors.

rod gervais · Post by **rod gervais** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:04 am

giles117 wrote:So Our understanding is that none of the floors are floated????

HOWEVER, the walls should have been floated on top of that floated floor to isolate them. Basically what you have now is walls in touch with the concrete floor which is transmitting vibrations to all the walls that are attached to that slab/sheet of concrete. Not good for ultimate ISO.

Bryan Giles

Actually, it really doesn't matter.

That is one method of acheiving this - but - if the walls are isolated from the slab (and in this case each other - then slab noise is not transmitting through the walls any more thas it would through an isolated slab.

So if the walls run to the slab and the isolated floor meets it - or vis versa - it makes do difference what so ever from a total isolation point of view.

The only real difference is that it is more expensive to do it that way (additional isolation required for the wall to slab assembly).

Rod

HopelessRomance · Post by **HopelessRomance** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 1:48 am

what i want to know is...how did you float the walls without floating floors?(don't they have to be attatched to the floor somewhere?)

mcguin · Post by **mcguin** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 9:51 am

Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 2:48 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"what i want to know is...how did you float the walls without floating floors?(don't they have to be attatched to the floor somewhere?) "

The wall framing (studs and sills) is fastened to the floor - all drywall on all walls (both sides of the double walls) is hung on RC, BUT the drywall is resting on neoprene to isolate from the floor - the ceilings are hung down from the steel roof trusses with iso mounts - therefore I believe/hope that sound should not transfer through the walls or ceiling to adjacent walls/ceilings - am I wrong???

Seems easy enough to float the drum room floor (luckily the door opens out and the thickness of the walls - 18 inches on the door wall - will allow for a gentle ramp up to the floated floor height

next question I guess is - float the 2X4 framing on edge on neoprene and fill he space between with sand??? top with what???

thanks guys

dan

HopelessRomance · Post by **HopelessRomance** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:07 am

Ah...i see. honestly i don't know about that...steve?

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon Jun 28, 2004 7:54 pm

No, either sand or rubber. The sand will flow around the rubber and negate any advantage - Rod covered this pretty well here, so I'll just refer you -

http://www.recording.org/postt20204.html

If you float using rubber and flat 2x's, I'd go for EPDM instead of neoprene, same Duro rating - it will last about twice as long (20 years instead of 10)

Either way, you want either sand or insulation to press against the bottom of the floor to eliminate resonance, because odds are it will be in the audible frequency range which means it needs to be damped... Steve