Wall Frame Isolation Products

How thick should my walls be, should I float my floors (and if so, how), why is two leaf mass-air-mass design important, etc.

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Zenon Marko
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Wall Frame Isolation Products

Post by Zenon Marko »

Hello -

I've been researching the various products available for isolation of decoupled wall frames from the floor. So far I have found the following items, but have found little or no mention of these in the forum. (The Mason one is mentioned in the Gervais book.)

Any experience with any of these products? Acoustic test data seems to be non-existent; at least I have yet to find any such.

Mason Industries NPS
https://www.mason-ind.com/nps/

Kinetics KSM
http://www.kineticsnoise.com/arch/ksm.html

PAC International RSIC-Universal (RSIC-U)
http://www.pac-intl.com/rsic-u.html
Soundman2020
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Re: Wall Frame Isolation Products

Post by Soundman2020 »

I've been researching the various products available for isolation of decoupled wall frames from the floor.
Why do you want to isolate your walls from your floor? For the vast majority of studios, that isn't necessary. Why do you thin you need to do it in your case? Is there some special situation that warrants that?


- Stuart -
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Re: Wall Frame Isolation Products

Post by Zenon Marko »

Soundman2020 wrote:
I've been researching the various products available for isolation of decoupled wall frames from the floor.
Why do you want to isolate your walls from your floor? For the vast majority of studios, that isn't necessary. Why do you thin you need to do it in your case? Is there some special situation that warrants that?


- Stuart -
Hello, Stuart!
Thank you for response.
Our design is with fully decoupled inner leaf walls, clips + hat channel for soffits and ceiling. The floor is ceramic tile right on the foundation concrete slab, so we are not building a full room-within-a-room design with floating floor, as I understand the expense and challenge of getting a floating floor right is rather extreme and beyond our means.

Even though concrete slab should not transmit much, and anyway it connects directly to outer masonry walls, I thought it wise to de-couple it from the inner walls.

For example, in Rod Gervais' book (2nd edition, p. 87), in reference to the example of the Mason NPS puck:
"Just as you can float slabs and ceilings, you can also float walls. These partition supports provide isolation from the existing slab to minimize slab transmissions into the wall structure."

Is this a misguided notion or overkill?
I am awaiting advice from my design consultant on this. One of the firms I contacted above thought it would make some improvement in isolation, but had no hard data to offer.

In case this should be direct specifically to my project, I uploaded new design drawing there:
Home Studio in NYC

I thought more general responses and comments, experiences, data on these products might merit their own thread here, though, if you find that worthwhile.
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