Garage Floor Plan (in design)

[adaglis6]

G.Studio Diamond #2 750pix.png

Hello All,
I recently purchased a house with a detached 24'X20' garage (on slab) about 30ft SouthEast, which I will be converting into a recording studio, with the intention of recording my bands and eventually other bands for $s. Right now, It is just a shell with siding on the outside and a tress system roof with basic electrical for lights and garage door. There is a strip of woods (aprox. 8ft deep) that borders the East and about 30 ft woods/kudzu that borders the South. I've practiced with my band (stoner/big muff/psych grooves) about 5 times and the garage might as well not even be there as far as volume goes...hella loud! But no cops so far. I practice almost everyday by myself with baffled drumheads and hot rod sticks and nobody has complained.
The attached file (please let me know if I need to reattach) is the third design I've made and seems like the most efficient and cost effective. I'm planning on doing the construction with friends and having most of the costs go into materials. I will be hiring an electrician who is a longtime friend, but I'm pretty clueless about HVAC requirements and costs. All that being said, I would like to keep this within a $5000-$8000 budget.
Live room is 228 sqft, Control room is 153 sqft, and iso booth is 27sqft. My plan is to put 8' ceilings in iso room and control room with drop ceilings and leave the tress system exposed and vaulted in the live room. The Live room ceilings (with tress) peak at 12'. Ultimately, I would like to have 2-4 floating walls so I can have infinite possibilities with isolation. I will be using the two leaf walling system through most of the garage. I would like to leave the garage door as a functioning door. There is a gap on the side wall which cannot be double walled because of the garage track, but was thinking to use either green glue double drywall or resilient channel with iso clips.
So here are my questions:
1) Do you think this is the most utilitarian, budget friendly use of my parameters?
2) Will the Tress system be a problem if left exposed? It's way too expensive to remove and not in my
budget. But, it seems like the beams would be good for breaking up waves and keeping the "room" vibe
(a friend of mine who has built studios suggested leaving it open).
3) How would you tackle soundproofing the garage door and side which cannot be double walled?
4) Would it be better to put up a second door to the entrance, or replace it with a super door? Super doors
throughout?
5) I need cost friendly, realistic ideas on the best way to provide A/C and fresh air. Heat is not necessary,
as I can use oil filled, no noise, radiating space heaters.
6) Would it be better acoustically to wall of the top of the control room and iso booth? That space could
also function as an attic or HVAC storage. Seems like I could run ducts very easily if it were sealed.
7) Will the control room be a mess with these parameters, or can I trap it out and have a reliable,
pleasurable listening environment?

Thanks to all for your time,
Al

[Soundman2020]

Hi Al, and Welcome!

I've practiced with my band (stoner/big muff/psych grooves) about 5 times and the garage might as well not even be there as far as volume goes...hella loud!

In order to determine how much isolation you need, you really should measure how loud you are in there with a sound level meter. They aren't that expensive: a good one will cost you around US$ 100. So measure how loud you are, and also measure how quiet you need to be: the difference between the two is how much isolation you need.

the third design I've made and seems like the most efficient and cost effective.

The overall concept looks good, but there are many details that need to be fixed, and some of them are pretty major. More about those later...

I'm planning on doing the construction with friends and having most of the costs go into materials.

Do any of those friends have construction experience? Framers, drywallers, carpenters, painters, HVAC installers, etc....

All that being said, I would like to keep this within a $5000-$8000 budget.

You have 480 square feet of space. 8 grand spread around 480 square feet works out to about 17 dollars per square foot... Very much on the low side. 8 grand will be enough for the HVAC, about half the framing, and maybe a few sheets of drywall. For example, you are looking at upwards of 100 sheets of 5/8" fire-rated drywall (assuming good isolation, and roughly the plan you have). Those go for around US$ 10 each: there goes a thousand dollars right there. 480 square feet of decent laminate flooring plus underlay is going to be around US$ 2000. There's one third of your budget gone, and you don't have any studs, nails, insulation, glue, sealant, doors, windows, electrical, HVAC, acoustic treatment, lights, cabling, tools, ... You are showing some very nice large windows in between your rooms, which is great, but a pane of suitable heavy laminated glass the size and thickness you'd need for the control room to live room window, is going to cost you several hundred dollars. And you need two such panes (one for each leaf).

Etc.

You are underestimating the cost of your materials by a large margin.

Instead of guessing at how much you think it will cost, it would be much better to prepare a rough "Bill of Materials" estimating the actual type and quantity of all of your building materials, then take a look around your local Home Depot to get an idea of prices. On the other hand, if your budget is absolutely fixed at 8k and cannot move, then based on the prices of the materials, you can see how much you need to shrink the studio, which walls you need to leave out, etc. in order fit the budget.

My plan is to put 8' ceilings in iso room and control room with drop ceilings and leave the tress system exposed and vaulted in the live room.

That will get you about zero isolation! Your plan as you have it right now shows the correct basis for proper two-leaf MSM isolation walls (even though some parts of that do need fixing), but your ceilings MUST be done in exactly the same way. Sound moves in all three dimensions at once, not just sideways: if you only isolate the walls but do not isolate the ceiling/roof, then you won't have any isolation at all. That would be like trying to build an aquarium by putting glass on only three sides of the frame, and taping a piece of cardboard over the fourth side... Your room will keep the sound in about as well as that aquarium would keep the water in...

leave the tress system exposed and vaulted in the live room

I think you mean "truss system" not "tress system", but you can't do that if you want isolation. Unless you isolate the roof/ceiling to the same level as the walls, you get no isolation. Sound take the easiest path out of the room, so if your walls are great but the ceiling is lousy, it will ignore the walls and take the ceiling... and from there it will spread out all over the neighborhood, but now with the advantage that it started it's journey up high, so it will travel further and seem louder....

I would like to have 2-4 floating walls so I can have infinite possibilities with isolation.

I'm not sure what you mean by "floating walls", but it doesn't seem to be the same as what studio designers mean by that term. A "floating wall" is one that is acoustically decoupled from the floor underneath while still being firmly attached to it with some type of resilient mount, and perhaps also acoustically decoupled from the walls on either side and the ceiling above, while still being firmly attached to them too. I'm not sure how that would give you "infinite possibilities with isolation". Such a wall will give you exactly one option for isolation: the one it was designed for. It will isolate exactly as well as the laws of physics predict it will, with no other possibilities. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what you were trying to say.

I will be using the two leaf walling system through most of the garage.

Excellent! That is, indeed, they best way to get high levels of isolation at the lowest cost. But there are several issues with the way you are showing that in your diagram right now: You are showing that the inner-leaf walls of the rooms are connected to each other, but that cannot happen. Each room must be built as an entirely independent, self-standing structure, consisting of the framing for the walls and the framing for the ceiling, with drywall on only one side of that framing, and no part of it can touch any other room, or the outer leaf. You will need to cut the mechanical connections that are shown on your plan, that link the rooms together. Those are major flanking paths that totally destroy your isolation. You also need to complete the missing parts of the inner-leaf in a a few places, notably in the Live Room.

I would like to leave the garage door as a functioning door

Then you can't have any isolation. Sorry. It really is that simple.

Isolation is only as good as the weakest point. If your weakest point is a gigantic hole in one wall with just a very thin panel of sheet metal over it, then the maximum amount of isolation you will get is the very, very poor isolation provided by that door. Which is probably not much more than about 15 to 20 dB, max. The final result will be exactly the same as it is now: "the garage might as well not even be there as far as volume goes...hella loud".

There is a gap on the side wall which cannot be double walled because of the garage track, but was thinking to use either green glue double drywall or resilient channel with iso clips.

That would be a waste of money, since it will accomplish nothing at all as long as the garage door remains as it is.

The usual way of dealing with garage doors when they have to remain in place due to local regulations, is to bolt and seal the door in place permanently, take out the tracks, motor, and mechanism, then build a frame just behind the door and drywall that to fully seal it off. Yes, that does create a 3-leaf system, but there's no choice here, and it is easy to compensate for that with more mass and larger gaps.

1) Do you think this is the most utilitarian, budget friendly use of my parameters?

Assuming that you do not want any isolation at all, and you are entirely happy with the very loud levels you are getting right now, then yes. On the other hand, if you do need good isolation, then there are quite a few things that you need to add to your plans in order to accomplish that.

2) Will the Tress system be a problem if left exposed? It's way too expensive to remove and not in my
budget. But, it seems like the beams would be good for breaking up waves and keeping the "room" vibe

If you leave the trusses exposed then you have no isolation. But you don't need to remove them! You just need to build a proper inner-leaf ceiling on top of your inner-leaf walls. If you really like the look of exposed rafters, beams and joists, then you can build your inner-leaf ceiling "inside out", and if you really like the vaulted look, then you can build the inner-leaf ceiling to follow the same lines and angles as the trusses.

Of course, I'm assuming that you have either raised-tie trusses (collar-tie) or scissor trusses: those are the only two types that would allow you to do that. If you have horizontal tie joists as the bottom chords of the trusses, then you have no choice: you are stuck with a flat ceiling in your live room. Your inner-leaf ceiling obviously cannot be any higher than the lowest point of the outer-leaf trusses.

(a friend of mine who has built studios suggested leaving it open).

He has built studios where the roof trusses are open to the room below? That's pretty amazing: I've never heard of anyone doing that. And of course, such a studio could not possibly be a professional studio where isolation is paramount, because it would be impossible to record in there. I'm wondering how on earth you would manage to record in such a studio when it is raining on that roof, or hailing, or when the wind blows, or if there is any thunder, or if a plane flies over, or if a car drives past, or if the neighbor decides to mow his lawn, or if people happen to be taking outside, or if a dog barks... With a room that is open to the outside world like that, there is no isolation...

Perhaps you misunderstood your friend, and he was just talking about having exposed beams inside the room? That's a very different thing from having exposed roof trusses...

3) How would you tackle soundproofing the garage door and side which cannot be double walled?

I would attack that in the only way possible: double wall it. There is no other way (assuming you want good isolation).

Let me explain: the door is just very thin sheet metal. Mass Law is the principle of physics that describes how much isolation you get from a barrier with given mass. The equation goes like this: "TL = 14.5 log Ms + 23 dB", where "Ms" is the surface density. Most garage doors are 25 gauge, or something similar. 25 gauge steel is roughly 0.5mm thick, which is about 0.02 inches. The density of steel is about 7800 kg/m3, so therefore the surface density ("Ms") of your door is roughly 4 kg/m2 (about 0.25 pounds per square foot). According to mass law, that will give you about 21 dB of isolation. For comparison, a typical lousy house wall is about ten times BETTER than that, at roughly 30 dB. And that's assuming that the door is perfectly sealed in place when closed. If there are any gaps around it, then the isolation will be even lower.

So if that door stays exactly as it is, then it really does not matter what you do to the rest of the building, your total isolation of the entire isolation studio will be about 21 dB: You could encase the entire building in 6 foot thick concrete, and the total isolation would still be about 21 dB: Because isolation is only as good as the weakest point, and that huge gaping hole of a door is certainly, without any doubt, your weakest point.

You cannot add any mass to the door because the tracks, motor, and mechanism are designed to handle only the amount of mass it already has, and even if you were to DOUBLE the mass, you'd only get an increase of maybe 4 or 5 dB (according to empirical mass law). If you were to replace the door with steel that is four times thicker, even then you'd only get about 29 dB of isolation. Still not as good as a typical lousy house wall.

So there is your dilemma: you can keep the door if that is what you want to do, but then would have effectively zero isolation. Or you can fix and seal the door in place, remove the mechanism, build a proper two-leaf wall behind it, and easily get 50 or 60 dB of isolation, which is about ten thousand times better (and I do mean literally ten thousand times better: 60 dB isolation is blocking ten thousand times more sound energy than 20 dB)

4) Would it be better to put up a second door to the entrance, or replace it with a super door? Super doors
throughout?

Yes, it would be better. In fact, it is the only option if you want good isolation.

5) I need cost friendly, realistic ideas on the best way to provide A/C and fresh air. Heat is not necessary,
as I can use oil filled, no noise, radiating space heaters.

You won't need much heating in there, that's for sure! If you isolate it properly, you are basically wrapping your studio in multiple layers of thermal blankets. Put a few people in there, some instruments, gear, and lights, and the temperature will rise pretty fast. Lack if heat is not the issue... To much heat is the problem.

Your least expensive option is to put a mini-split system in each room to take care of the cooling and humidity, plus a simple ducted venting system to bring fresh air in to each room, and extract stale air from each room. Those will need suitable silencer boxes (which you can build yourself) on each wall penetration. That is the cheapest way of doing it.

6) Would it be better acoustically to wall of the top of the control room and iso booth? That space could
also function as an attic or HVAC storage. Seems like I could run ducts very easily if it were sealed.

I'm not sure what you mean by "wall of the top of the control room and iso booth". Each room will have its own separate ceiling, which will be placed at the most advantages height, acoustically, determined by calculation. If there is any space left over above that inner-leaf ceiling, then yes, it usually is used for the HVAC ducting. But in general, it is desirable to have the ceilings in each room as high as possible, for better acoustics inside. However,m you also need to check the modal response to make sure that the ceiling height is not going to cause modal problems, and if the calculations show that it would, then the height needs to be changed.

7) Will the control room be a mess with these parameters, or can I trap it out and have a reliable,
pleasurable listening environment?

There are no dimensions on your images, so it's hard to calculate anything about the acoustic response of the control room, but it does seem to be a reasonable size, and corner-control rooms can be done successfully. They are a little more tricky in the treatment on the rear walls, but they can still work great. You should design the control room so that it meets the ITU-R BS.1116-2 spec, or gets as close as possible to it. That's the ideal. EBU-3276 is very similar.

So in general, you do have a decent space where you can build your studio, but there are some major issues with the design that need fixing, and you should also re-think your budget, since it isn't realistic right now.

Sorry to dump all that on you at once, but I'm sure you didn't come here to have folks tell you lies! That's the honest truth about your studio. It can be great, and the basic layout is good, but the details need work, and so does the budget.



- Stuart -

[adaglis6]

Thanks for the response, Stuart!

As far as the budget goes, I'm going to try and get this done under $8000. We have surplus stores here and I can get contractor discounts on materials. Since I wasn't going to tackle the floors anyway, can I leave them as they are for now (concrete) without too much consequence? I know I need to seal all air gaps. I was going to put huge area rugs down to cover the floor space. This project will be a work in progress and there will have to be certain things left for another day.

In regards to the truss system, I meant to leave the beams exposed and insulate/drywall the ceiling. The beams of the truss are laying horizontal across the walls (looks like fink or fan). But, now that I think about it, it may be more work and $s to do that instead of just building the 8' flat 2 leaf seal. I was hoping to have some head room, but oh, well! And by floating walls, I meant movable walls on wheels.

The garage door will now be sealed off and properly double walled

My control room as of now is 13'L X 6'6"W X 9'6.5"(window side) X 8'H. Would you suggest any adjustments to these measurements or any changes to the general layout?

Thanks again,
Al

[adaglis6]

Hello all,
Here is my revised layout with the garage door walled off. A couple more questions:

1) The current dimensions of the control room are 13'L X 6'6"W X 9'9"W (Glass Wall) X 8'H. Are Louden and Sepmeyer ratios applicable to corner control rooms....if so how? Is there a better design/dimensions that is similar to this one that would not create too much unusable space? Would a corner room even be the most efficient design for my 24'X20' space?

2) I am thinking about vaulting the ceiling just in the live section. I've been talking to a contractor that says it can be done by sistering in the support beams and cutting out the trusses one by one. If this becomes a reality, what is the best way to soundproof the ceiling using the 2 leaf system? Is there another option? Framing seems like it would be tricky.

Thanks for any and all of your help,
Al

[adaglis6]

Sooooo,
I got sidetracked with life for a while, but have been putting thought back into this studio design. I'm thinking about just going for one big room. I've talked to contractors and if the $ is right, will be installing an LVL beam, taking out the trusses and vaulting the ceiling. NOW...I've been hunting for threads which explain how to construct a room within a room w vaulted ceilings and have failed to find any with in depth explanations on how to go about doing this. I'm looking for maximum height (around 10'6" after drywall if possible. Peak as of now is 12') Some questions:
1) Does there need to be another LVL beam installed underneath? This seems like it would eat up all the headroom.
2)Is there a way to frame just the walls and then have some kind of drop ceiling or one with resilient channel and ISO clips? If possible, what kind of isolation am I looking at? I did a lot of number crunching with room mode calculators and came to the dimensions of 21'11"L X 17'10"W X 10'5" H as being most ideal w my 24' X 20' space.
3) Would it just be more practical, economical to skip the internal framing and go with resilient channel, ISO clips, double drywall with green glue?
I'm having a lot of trouble finding answers, so ANY advice or in depth links would be greatly appreciated!
THANKS,
Al

[Soundman2020]

I've been hunting for threads which explain how to construct a room within a room w vaulted ceilings and have failed to find any with in depth explanations on how to go about doing this. I'm looking for maximum height (around 10'6" after drywall if possible. Peak as of now is 12') Some questions:

With a vaulted ceiling, you would have to completely re-arrange the control room so that it is symmetrical with the ceiling. Symmetry is critical. Why do you want to do only one room?

1) Does there need to be another LVL beam installed underneath? This seems like it would eat up all the headroom.

Not necessarily: there are alternatives, but you have not provided near enough information to be able to say anything useful about that. Your models do not show any framing at at all, and without that it is impossible to see what you have, and what you are trying to do. Please fill in all the details on your model, showing the exact position of everything as it is right now, including all framing and structural elements, and also show the same for what you plan to do.

2)Is there a way to frame just the walls and then have some kind of drop ceiling or one with resilient channel and ISO clips?

Perhaps, but unlikely. and once again, with so little information to go on, it is impossible to say.

3) Would it just be more practical, economical to skip the internal framing and go with resilient channel, ISO clips, double drywall with green glue?

That's another possibility, but here too, there just isn't enough data to be able to say anything useless.

I'm having a lot of trouble finding answers,

Perhaps that's because you aren't asking the right questions?

For example, you still haven't told us how many decibels of isolation you need...

If I were to put this into car terms, this is sort of like if you were asking us what is the best planetary gear ratio for the differential, but you haven't even told us if you are buying a car, a truck, or a motorbike!



- Stuart -

[adaglis6]

The room is 24'x20' with 2"x4" studs 16" apart. Ceiling joists at approx 8' high with 2' spacing between rafters. Peak at 12'. I want to vault the ceiling for more sonic space, acoustics, aesthetics. One room because it's more practical for my use, affordable, and from what I've gathered, will sound better if done correctly. I Won't be providing a sketchup because my OS doesn't support it. It's a pretty basic shell of a garage, so humor me and imagineer it. Wall framing will be done with 2"x4" studs with 16" spacing. Assuming the structural engineering, load bearing, Yada Yada, is up to snuff with a 24' LVL with 2"x8" rafters ( every 2') in place with Cross ties on the rafters so the ceiling will max at 10'6" (with drywall), I want to decouple the new wall with the new rafters. After more searching, it looks like there are Decoupling clips for this purpose.
I'm just trying to accomplish what 95% of garage studio goers want, ie. to not have the cops called on them and record decent quality music (mostly loud) . I'm on roughly a $10000 (construction only) budget, with no delusions of mixing Taylor Swift "quality" records. I think my question About online examples and advice for internal framing w vaulted ceiling is legit. I'm asking for examples and design/construction direction towards a one room studio/live space w a vaulted ceiling.

[Soundman2020]

I'm just trying to accomplish what 95% of garage studio goers want, ie. to not have the cops called on them and record decent quality music (mostly loud)

Here's the thing: there is no way I can plug that information into the acoustic equations that tell you how to build your walls to get the isolation you want.

Here's the most basic equation: empirical mass law:

TL = 14.5 log Ms + 23 dB

Where:
Ms = Surface Mass of the wall in lb/ft2.
TL = the transmission loss ("isolation"), measured in decibels.

As you can see, there's no place there to insert the isolation estimate you gave: "not have the cops called on them".

Until you can come up with the actual number of decibels of isolation that you need, nobody can tell you how to get it!

Here's one of the commonly used spec for defining the acoustic response of a control room:

https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3276.pdf

The graphs and equations in there don't seem to have any way of applying your need to "record decent quality music"!

Unless you can better describe what you mean by that phrase, there's not much that an acoustician can do to help you!

If you go to a doctor and say "I'm sick. Make me better", then when he asks you what the problem is, you tell him "I just want to be like 95% of the people, ie, walk and talk normally without falling down or dying", I think you can imagine thet he won't be able to help you! That's the same dilemma you are creating here: you need to put a little effort into your goals and specifications, with real-world numbers. Without that, there isn't much we can do.

I Won't be providing a sketchup because my OS doesn't support it.

Strange OS! It runs on PC, mac and Linux... what are you using?

I'm on roughly a $10000 (construction only) budget,

10 grand divided among 480 square feet, makes about 20 bucks per square foot... Hmmmm.... sadly, that isn't going to go very far: Allow maybe 3 grand for HVAC, another 2 grand for the glass, and you are down to 5 grand or $10 per square foot. Decent flooring can cost $2 to $3 per square foot. Drywall costs around $1 per square foot, and you are going to need about two thousand square feet for the ceilings (two layers, two leaves), at least, plus another thousand or so for the walls, .... your budget is not going to make it.

I'm asking for examples and design/construction direction towards a one room studio/live space w a vaulted ceiling.

Then why are your drawings showing a three-room studio? If you want advice for a single room studio, then your drawings are wrong. Or if you want advice for building what you show, then your text is wrong.

But anyway, there are several examples of various types of studios, done in various ways, here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/

I'd also suggest two books for you: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. They will give you the basic knowledge you need to know about acoustics in order to be able to design an acoustic space, and also about how to plan the actual construction. the principles laid out in those books are just as applicable to vaulted ceiling studios as they are to any other shape.

It seems to me that you are looking for a "cookie cutter" type approach, where you can find a picture of something that is vaguely similar to what you have, and sort of push, pull, scale, stretch and chop things around until it fits your space. That won't work. All studios are different. All of them need to be calculated and treated correctly for their specific purpose, and based on their specific situation. You cannot just take bit and pieces and shove them together, hoping they will work: they wont. A diffuser designed for one studio might sound terrible if used in another. Resonators are tuned to specific frequencies that need attention in specific rooms, so copying one from somebody else's studio to yours would treat the wrong frequencies, while NOT treating the right ones. Etc. designing a studio is nowhere near as simple as most people think: it normally takes me a couple of months, because there are so many factors to take into account.

I think my question About online examples and advice for internal framing w vaulted ceiling is legit.

Your question is, indeed, legit. It is just incomplete. It's sort of like putting out a questions saying "Hi. I need to build an airplane with two wings and a tail, and a motor. Please show me examples of how to do that". Sorry, but that ain't gonna fly, literally and figuratively, unless you first learn about aerodynamics, and the techniques used in aircraft design and construction.

Your question is legit, but way too incomplete to be an actual usable question in the real world of studio design.


- Stuart -

[rhender]

I am doing a very similar thing. This forum looks awesome btw.

I am wanting to double wall a room in my "garage apartment" for rehearsal and recording.
It has a vaulted ceiling that I would like to keep vaulted.
But I know that I need to "double ceiling" that vaulted ceiling in order to soundproof it correctly.
So yes, I want to do a room within room construction and keep the vaulted ceiling.
I am trying to figure out how to frame it right now.
That is what brought me to this forum.

The walls are pretty easy to frame I suppose... I say that, but I haven't done much framing at all.
But I'm a tad stumped when it comes to framing the new ceiling to sit on the double walls....