Small two room build

[sam guaiana]

Hi there!

A friend and I are getting ready to do a small studio build. Upon doing our research for spaces, we finally stumbled upon one we like, and which is well within our price range. We are both used to the converted bedroom life, and, in my opinion, are fairly capable at our skills, especially considering our current space constrictions. That being said, we don't need the facility sized space, when a more comfortable, yet workable space is more important to us.

On to the space. We found about 580sqft in our city, laid out at 16.5x36 and 16.5x33, with the one wall being shorter, due to a recessed entrance. Nice ceiling height, about 12 feet I believe. Our goal is to maximize our rooms as much as possible and leave a tiny, yet necessary lounge, even if its only 3-4 ft wide. We also need to do a full buildout, and we're considering room within a room to keep noise transfer away from the other units. We were thinking a 2" gap, wall, 2" second wall. The space is in a basement, so there's less need to keep the floor's sound transfer down, but a main requirement to building the space is making sure our neighbours don't hear us.

We generally record rock, pop punk. Never really do off the floor, but we do record full kits, and the occasional off the floor pre pro, so drums will be hit. Also we plan on renting it for rehearsal after hours as well.

I've attached some photos of the space, as well as a preliminary drawing I've done. I had two originally, one with a hallway, but my concern about the hallway one is it leaves a tiny lounge, and I feel that, aside from the ability to get into each room separately, which is not a concern to me personally, the hallway door to the live room will be too narrow after the walls are built out. Also, in my sketch, the rooms are reversed, I'd prefer the CR in the back so if we do rent it for practicing, bands aren't constantly trampling through my control room

All of the measurements are close, but I've been constantly making changes. A ratio calculator gave me a better idea of a CR ratio of 11.9x14.6 at an 11 foot ceiling, so I plan on doing that for the control room, and I'm okay with losing that half foot in width in the live room if the air gap will help with minimizing the sound transfer.

I have Rod Gervais' book on building out a space, and I see the diagrams with the double drywalled walls, so my question about that is, how do you do that? Would you construct the wall on the ground and then stand it up? How then would you glue the seams together, or do the ceiling?? Also, ventilation, what's the best route to do that?

Please lemme know what any of you think of the sizes, etc...

I know many people say go bigger CR than LR, but I'm ok with a smaller, workable CR if the ratios are in my favour.

Any feedback, as well as any opinions/ideas are incredibly appreciated; from the bottom of my heart, it means a lot that anyone would take the time to even check all this out.

Thank you sooo sooo much!

Sam

[JCBigler]

Nice looking space.

Are the pipes overhead water or sewer for whatever is above it? Fire sprinklers? I.e. something that can't be removed?

Is the 12 feet of height including the pipe? or is that 12 feet below the pipe?

I think you have a nice space for a decent project studio. There's not enough room to be a full rehearsal space for a four person rock band though, I don't think. But I think you can make two nice spaces out of that area.

Someone else will have to chime in regarding the construction techniques for the walls, etc...

Have you downloaded Sketchup and played with it yet? If not, do so. Build a blank room template with the exact measurements of the room that you have and then start trying out different configurations etc... It's almost as much fun as actually recording!

[sam guaiana]

Nice looking space.

Are the pipes overhead water or sewer for whatever is above it? Fire sprinklers? I.e. something that can't be removed?

Is the 12 feet of height including the pipe? or is that 12 feet below the pipe?

I think you have a nice space for a decent project studio. There's not enough room to be a full rehearsal space for a four person rock band though, I don't think. But I think you can make two nice spaces out of that area.

Someone else will have to chime in regarding the construction techniques for the walls, etc...

Have you downloaded Sketchup and played with it yet? If not, do so. Build a blank room template with the exact measurements of the room that you have and then start trying out different configurations etc... It's almost as much fun as actually recording!

Thank you! Those pipes are sprinkler pipes and the building has its own guys to move them at a decent fee, so we'll be lowering the heads into the space when we start to build. I believe the pipes are about 10 feet up, so we have about 3 more feet above them. We may cap each room at 10 ft ceilings to avoid any issues with the pipes. I've recently redrawn the space to make more use of it. I attached it below. The walls are accounted for one foot, which includes an air gap, first leaf, air gap, second leaf for the live room, and the control room won't be double walled except between rooms.

For reference, the door to enter the unit will be on the bottom right wall entering into the live room, or on the 3.5 foot wall at the bottom, entering right into the lounge.

I've yet to get my hands on Sketchup, but I will be playing with it soon! I'm having trouble getting the hang of it haha.

[Soundman2020]

Hi there Sam, and welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately, there was a glitch on the forum that screwed up some attachments that were posted between December 15 and December 22. Including yours, in your second post Please could you post those photos again. Just edit your post and add the photos in the same way. Sorry about that, but John's hosting service moved the forum to a new server, and they screwed it up, leaving out some attachments.

Anyway, about your first post: You said:

We were thinking a 2" gap, wall, 2" second wall.

That would be a three-leaf wall, or a "room in a room in a room"! Not what you need, wastes space, and will give you poor low-frequency isolation.

You definitely do need "room in a room", but you already HAVE one of those! That's your existing walls, as visible in the photos. So what you should do is to build your live room as a single-leaf wall, consisting of a stud frame with drywall on only ONE side of it, then build the control room the same way (single-leaf. stud frame with drywall on only one side), and finally add another single-leaf wall to close of the area between the actual studio space and the lounge, which does not need to be isolated. Those "leaves" might consist of more than one layer, but even then all the layers go on top of each other, on only one side of the frame.

The space is in a basement,

So your floor is resting directly on the ground? No more rooms below you? No crawl space?

a main requirement to building the space is making sure our neighbours don't hear us

You should first define how much isolation you need, in terms of decibels. With a hand-held sound level meter, find out how loud you are, how quiet you need to be, and how much isolation you are already getting just as it is right now.

in my sketch, the rooms are reversed, I'd prefer the CR in the back so if we do rent it for practicing, bands aren't constantly trampling through my control room

Very smart move! I was going to suggest that when I saw the diagram. That's a very important change that does need making.

how do you do that? Would you construct the wall on the ground and then stand it up?

For an "inside out" wall, yes. That's a wall that is done backwards from normal, so the studs end up facing the room and the drywall ends up facing the cavity. Yes, you build it in manageable sections, then lift each section into place wither manually or with a wall jack, brace it temporarily so it cannot fall, bolt it to the other sections, seal the joints carefully, then take out the bracing.

How then would you glue the seams together,

As you raise each new section up against what is already in place, you coat the mating surfaces with acoustic caulk, then you bolt, screw or nail the two together, ensuring that there are no gaps, and all cracks are well sealed with even more caulk.

or do the ceiling??

If you are building the ceiling inside out, then you also build it laying flat on the floor, in sections, and lift each section into place, similar to how you do the walls. Here you can use a heavy duty drywall lifter to get each section up. Then you bolt/nail/screw it in place, once again taking care to seal all the mating surfaces and joints with caulk. I normally start at the edges of the room and work inwards towards the center, so each section is being bolted to something that is already firmly in place. If the room is very wide or long, then I prefer to run heavier beams across the middle and also bolt to those, for better structural integrity. But do get a structural engineer to check your design before you build it, to make sure it is safe and meets all code requirements.

Also, ventilation, what's the best route to do that?

It's not just ventilation: it is a full HVAC system that you need. Ventilation is very important, yes, but you also need cooling and dehumidifying for the air. The easiest way to do that is with a simple "mini-split" system in each room, plus a ventilation system to to bring in the fresh air and take out the stale air. The vent system consists of ducts, fans, and silencer boxes. The silencer boxes (a.k.a "baffle boxes") go on all wall penetrations, where the duct goes through a leaf, to keep things acoustically isolated (blocking sound from getting in or out) while still permitting air to move through.

There's a lot of calculations that go into the HVAC system, to figure out the flow rates ad flow speeds, duct sizes, fan sizes, isolation, cooling capacity, etc. It's one area of studio design that is greatly neglected, but extremely important. It's a really good sign that you though of this up front, since way too many home studio builders don't think of it at all... until it is way too late.

In your case, all of your HVAC can go up in the ceiling space, where the sprinkler pipes are, to save space. I'd suggest putting all your ducts and silencer boxes up there.

I know many people say go bigger CR than LR,

Actually, the general rule of thumb is that the live room should be about five times bigger (or more) than the control room, in terms of volume. There are acoustical reasons for that. So a bigger LR is a GREAT idea (even if you can't get it close to 5 times bigger).


- Stuart -

[JCBigler]

In your case, all of your HVAC can go up in the ceiling space, where the sprinkler pipes are, to save space. I'd suggest putting all your ducts and silencer boxes up there.

Stuart, this brings up something that I have been wondering about. When dealing with commercial buildings that require fire sprinkler systems, how do you get those past the inner leaf without ruining the isolation of the room?

[Soundman2020]

Stuart, this brings up something that I have been wondering about. When dealing with commercial buildings that require fire sprinkler systems, how do you get those past the inner leaf without ruining the isolation of the room?

With great difficulty!

The best way to do it, is to decouple the part within the room with a flexible coupler. So you have the feed pipe entering at some point and attached to the outer leaf, then you use some flexible couplers on a "loop", then the continuation of the pipe attached to the inner-leaf:

flexible-fire-pipe-fireloop_sm.jpg

That section can then go through the leaf (properly sealed, of course!) and on to the sprinkler heads themselves, which can then be disguised as part of the acoustic treatment, if the fire code allows that.

There are other types of flexible coupler, just for the sprinkler heads themselves.

It's not a fantastic solution, as the decouplers are meant more for seismic decoupling, not so much acoustic, but it's better than nothing.

- Stuart -