THE OVERVIEW:
The area: the basement, located underneath the main floor of the house, directly under the living room, dining room and kitchen. Approximately 400 sq ft in total, but only about 260 or so will be used for the project. The remainder will be for storage, washer/dryer and/or foundational utilities (gas, furnace, boiler, etc.). The ceiling is 7’ high in most areas. The area has a metal support beam going across the middle(ish) of the basement and the HVAC system that brings the ceiling in those areas down to about 6’ 6”.
Current layout:
The room: a practice room, primarily for the drums. It may be used for some light recording, but only to track ideas and concepts—not final products.
Planned layout:
The idea was to keep the space as wide open as possible, leaving the main area as basically one big room where my desk and drums will be setup, including an open sitting area for bandmates or buds who come over to jam.
THE CONCERNS
The primary concern is the noise going to the living/dining room / kitchen directly above the basement and to the Den/main house staircase through the door/stairwell going down to the basement. Because this is a split level home, the stairs going up from the basement are a half-pace staircase that travels four floors from the basement to the upstairs bedroom floor. So any noise that goes into that stair case (I presume) will reverberate throughout the whole house.
A secondary concern, which I become less concerned with each time I test/think about it, is noise leaving the house from the basement. I will go into more detail in this latter in the “how loud am I?” section but I’m not too worried about it.
THE DECIBEL METER
All the readings in this post were made by an Extech 407730 Digital Sound Level Meter with the slow settings measuring DBC/DBA as indicated unless otherwise specified. The meter I used is here: https://tinyurl.com/ydhd5mce
HOW LOUD AM I?
The drums, measured above the front of the bass drum at drummer-head height maxed out at 115.
Directly upstairs from the drums, the baseline is 53 DBC and sub-40 DBA and when playing the drums it reaches a maximum of 85 DBC and 75 DBA).
Outside: Baseline DBA is 46-53 depending on the time of day, Baseline DBC is about 63. The highest change in decibels when playing the drums near a property line occurred in my backyard and was about 65 DBC and about 55 DBA. That area was the most “vulnerable” part of the outside as there are two basement windows on that side of the house.
We live on about .25 acre with about 50 feet separating either house on our side. There are no windows on the neighbor-sides of the basement, and when you stand outside the house, you only hear the drums from the windows in the front and rear. Even at that, the sound is so low that when I stand by the fence separating either neighbor, I don’t hear it much at all as indicated by the decibel readings above. This is likely aided by the fact that I live relatively close to a major highway (which for once is a good thing) and therefore the baseline is a little high. The windows down there are old, BROKEN single pane windows, so I imaging replacing them with double pane windows will make enough different to not be concerned about this at all-but still throwing it in here in case anyone has some input. Additionally, the plan has the washer/dryer room containing those two windows (it’s unfortunate, but there really is no other place to put those units without changing all the piping and making new drywells which I’m just not doing) so there will be an additional wall separating the drums from those two windows as well.
EXISTING CONSTRUCTION:
Floorplan for existing construction is below:
The overall space is approximately 20’ by 20’ 6”. There is a door at the top of the basement stairs, then 5 steps that lead to the basement from the den (which is on a concrete slab). To the left is a cedar closet that is staying. Also on the left wall is a built out box around the gas unit (which will stay and be turned into an entertainment console) and another box in the corner housing the water main. In between the two boxes on that wall is a 32 x 18” window. In the back right corner of the room is the pump up for the bathroom extension (garage conversion). It is a movable/replaceable/self-contained pump-up approximately 24” x 24”. About 4.5 feet to the right of that unit is the hot water heater which is adjacent to the gas furnace. In the center of the room there is a 6” metal beam that supports the house across the basement and is indicated with dotted lines in the above image. There is a vertical beam supporting this horizontal beam in three locations: against the wall opposite the staircase, immediately to the right of the staircase (about the 2nd step up) and in the center of the room, approximately 9’ 10” from the staircase wall. The beam is 3” round.
The gas furnace leads to ducts (obviously) that drop the ceiling to 6’ 6” in the areas indicated in red on the image below. There is an intake vent above the drum-side of the basement (green square) and one output vent (blue square) which is very easily moveable and perhaps easy to make a soundbox for?
Outside of the boxes for the utilities (which are just 2x3 stud boxes which are just frames) and the cedar closet (which is finished with cedar lining on the inside and drywall on the outside). There is no material on the walls or ceiling. The walls are poured concrete and the floor is also concrete.
The ceilings beams are 2x8s, 16” apart on center. There was standard fiberglass insulation in-between the ceiling beams but about 1/3 of it has fallen out, leaving many of the areas in-between the beams completely empty. The insulation that remains is old and brittle and falling out more and more each passing day.
Above the ceiling beams sit a wooden subfloor. Above that there are two different floorings. The areas highlighted in blue in the picture below have natural wood floors above them. The areas highlighted in green in the picture below have ¾” plywood below ceramic tile.
Here's what the area looks like right now:
From the top of the stairs: From the bottom of the stairs: From the bottom right corner (washer): From the bottom left corner (cedar closet): From the top left corner (water main): From the top right corner (pump up): And a pick of the different heights of ceilings:
THE REQUIRED RESULTS:
The required results is unfortunately not specifically determinable. I live with my wife, which is the only person I am concerned about upsetting/annoying with the drums/loud music downstairs. I’ve played the drums in the basement as-is and she tells me that its fine the way it is and that as long as I don’t play when she’s sleeping (which I wouldn’t in any case), she’s fine with that. Her exact words were “Any additional sound dampening would be great but not necessary”. Even if she is telling the truth and not just saying that to make me feel better or something, I would still want to do what I can do reduce the noise for her as best I can—within reason. Therefore I’m setting my “required” result as the noise level in the living room directly above the drums at 60 DBA (which is currently at 70 DBA / 85 DBC). But, at the end of the day I’m looking for the best value. If I need to get to 60 DBA and I’m at 61 and it’s going to cost me 2 weeks of labor and $15,000 to get that extra point, then I’m not doing it. At the same time, if I can get 50 DBA and it’s only going to cost me a few hours and another $1,000 I’ll do it. So again, result is flexible based on cost-to-effect ratio, but around 60 DBA or better in the living room is where I’d be happy.
THE PLAN
The layout plan:
Originally, the plan was to make the basement a sound fortress (the most cost effective way possible). The plan was to:
- • Change the door at the top of the staircase a solid wood door and soundproof the seals around the door
• Add a second door at the bottom of the staircase—same thing.
• Remove all the drywall in the stairwell and use Rockwoll Safe n Sound insulation under the stairs and in the walls of the stairwell and the ceiling and walls throughout the basement.
• Use two layers of 5/8” fire rated drywall with green glue in-between and staggered such that no two joints line up (for stability more than anything else) on all walls and ceilings.
So with that being said, the current “plan” is as follows:
- • Change the door at the top of the staircase t a solid wood door and soundproof the seals around the door
• Remove the ceiling above the staircase and place Rockwol insulation and cover with 5\8” fire rated drywall
• Use foam board insulation against the concrete and cover with 5/8” fire rated Drywall on the basement walls
• Use Rockwoll Safe N Sound insulation in the ceiling and cover with one layer of 5/8” fire rated drywall
BUIDGET:
I’m looking at around $3,000-$8,000 in budget not including the floor. Though I can go higher than that if the value is there. Value, at the end of the day, is more important than the overall budget.
QUESTIONS:
1. Will my current plan obtain a desired result of approximately 15 decibel reduction to the floor above?
2. Does soundproofing my walls have a significant effect on the sound that transfers to the ceiling?
3. If I do 2 layers of sheetrock and green glue on the ceiling, do I need to have an engineer come out?
4. Is it worth the effort it to do the 2 layers + green glue on the ceiling?
5. The ceiling beam in the center of the room will separate the ceiling into two parts. If I do just a single layer of 5/8’ drywall over the green portion of the below image and do the 2 layers with green glue over the blue portion (which is where the drums will be), would that be an effective use of resources? Or would not having the same mass on the other side of the room greatly reduce the effectiveness?
6. Alternatively, I have considered using resilient channel on the ceiling with one layer of drywall. Will that have similar effects as two layers of drywall with the green glue? I was considering the option because it was cheaper and much easier to install than two layers of sheetrock, but my research indicated that it may actually worsen the problem because of how small the air gap would be?
7. How much better is the Rockwol Insulation compared to normal insulation? Is it worth the nearly 2x cost? Especially considering I already have a good amount of old fiberglass insulation already in the ceiling that I could reuse to save some $$.
8. How concerned should I be about the HVAC system?
- 8a. Is there anything I can do about the HVAC system? I think I can make a box for the output vent, because we are building a wall just to support that vent anyway. The intake, however, I have no idea what I would do.
Thank you all for any and all help provided! If you need any more information please let me know and if there is anything I can do to repay the favor, please don’t hesitate to ask!