Drum Room for Music School

[templejazz82]

Hi everyone- I teach at a school here in Chadds Ford, PA, which is in the Southeastern part of Pennsylvania, just north of the Delaware/PA state line and about 25 east of the PA/Maryland border. Temperatures go from pretty stupid hot and humid in the summer to pretty stupid cold and snowy in the winter. My friend owns the school I teach at, and recently bought a new building. As the drum teacher, he brought me over to his new building, which has been under construction for a while (permits/township stuff/normal stuff to prohibit a commercial build in a residential area. Before I get too far, the room will NOT be utilized for recording drums. So, external noise (cars/rain/hail/screaming people) is not a concern. We are on Rt 52, which is a 2 lane road with lots of traffic, and across the street from a pretty big hotel/conference room/ballroom. I share this info because there is already a pretty decent amount of sound emitting from that general area. Now, I am bringing a few drums to do formal measurements of the room we would like to propose as the drum room on January 2nd or 3rd of the new year, but wanted to share some pictures. Our only concern right now, is the waiting room area, which will be connected to the drum room.

The drum room sits on concrete blocks and is the only part of this house-turned-school that is isolated from the rest of the house, with the exception of a single wall. Knowing that even one small connection can throw away any isolation, we wanted to try to attack it before doing too much other work.

The good news is that he is currently using a two car garage-turned-studio that is at his house, as well as a smaller practice room and waiting room on his property at his house, and has been in that space for at least 10 years. I say this because we have about 90 students a week on various instruments and have never gotten a complaint about the drums leaking into the waiting room or interrupting other lessons. Our clients are generally elementary and middle school students, with very few exceptions. This is important, as a typical kit can get up to around 105db/110db, but these kids, being little and generating significantly less strength, get up to around 90db in the room we are in now. Also, not all the lessons are on drumset. In many instances we are on a pad/snare drum, and dive into the drumset when ready.

With ALL of this said: We are thinking about how the room will be somewhat isolated from the waiting room. We do not need it to be sound tight, but we would also not want it to sound like the people in the waiting room are in the lesson with us! 3 of the walls are to the outside world. We have a few ideas, and I attached some pics below, and wanted to get some opinions of you all.

1- Double 5/8 drywall on all the interior walls and ceiling, with insulation between. Double 5/8 drywall on waiting room wall connected to the drum room. Seal all areas/backer rod, overlap seams. The door would be an exterior front door, with appropriate seals, however, no threshold due to the need to be ADA compliant (commercial facility).

2- Same as one, but using RC-1 on the studs for a little more isolation. perhaps even using RSIC clips and hat channel to go even deeper with isolation.

3- A second wall (and second door) on the interior of the drum room. I am concerned about this, as I am not too sure where we would connect the wall to. Connecting to 2 of the 3 walls on the inside of the drum would create a giant flanking path, I think?

4- A true room in a room. This would lose a little space, but probably yield the best results with regards to isolation. I am just trying to see if options 1,2,3 will get us in a place that is better than today. In reality, we want the vibe that work is getting down. We want parents to say, upon coming out of the lesson "wow, was that a Beatles tune you guys were playing??", so being totally isolated is not our goal.

The room is 12'5"Lx15'Wx9'H (rough estimate). Pics below, and again, any feedback is extremely appreciated!!

[Gregwor]

Even with your 4th option, the people in your waiting room will still hear what's going on in the drum room. Something you haven't talked about is HVAC. Also, you didn't mention the windows in the drum room. Both of these things are going to be your weak links in the build. You could have the entire room made out of concrete but if you don't address the windows and HVAC, you're going to have no better isolation then you have right now.

Having said that, I'd suggest using clips and hat channel. It won't break your bank account, is quickly installed, and will also save you space in your room. However, you still need to address the HVAC situation. I'm not sure how things are tied into your system right now but in order to get any more isolation from the waiting room than you have now, you will need to isolate the ventilation system. This insertion loss is achieved using HVAC silencer boxes.

Maybe 3D model the area and you can figure out where you can install the silencer boxes

Greg