John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I have put together four rigid fiberglass wall panels without any framing. They are simply 4ft x 2ft x 1.5inch panels wrapped in burlap. ( I had previously made similar panels using 4" thick insulation. Those sit on the floor, so mounting was not an issue.) For my specific needs, I have to mount these four panels one or one and one half inches from the wall. And I am completely stumped when it comes to exactly how to mount these things.

I have read through the various semi-related threads on this forum without luck. There is no wood frame, so using the common wood frame related details won't work. And while impaling clips sound like a workable solution, I have had a thread on the Building Material forum asking where to purchase impaling clips and it has received 0 replies. I have considered velcro, but I think that the weight of the panel would require LOTS of velcro.

So, now I am asking for assistance. how would you (yes, You!) mount a 4ft x 2ft rigid fiberglass panel (with NO framing, just insulation and burlap) to a drywall surface while allowing for a 1" (or so, 1.5" would be good) gap between the wall and the panel?

My only plan so far is that the bottom of the panels should probably rest on something (like a very narrow shelf) as their own weight could doom some sort of hanging arrangement over time. (they're not that heavy, just a fraction of what the 4" panels weigh, but enough that I wouldn't trust a picture hook/wire type of mounting.)

Any suggestions? Thank you.

Here's one source, if you're willing to use it;

http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/prod ... _clips.asp

However, these don't provide a way of standing off from the wall. For that, you'd need either a type of impaling clip with a "stop" partway along its length, or maybe glue some small blocks on the wall and the clips onto the blocks.

You might do something similar to this

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/download.php?id=1391

except you would use the movable half of the beveled pair of boards for a surface to glue your impaling clips;

If your material is 3 PCF (as 703 fiberglass is) then the entire panel will only weigh 3 pounds, so you could conceivably take some really long wood screws, run them through the back of a block of your desired thickness for spacing away from the wall, and leave an inch of screw sticking out of the block - then, glue the block to the wall with the pointed ends of the screws sticking out, and impale the fiberglass on those. I would look for some long, skinny deck screws for this -

Probably the easier way would be to just use some of the standard impaling clips and glue them onto blocks and glue the blocks onto the wall, which would stand off your material the desired distance... Steve

Thanks for the reply. This weekend was allocated to installing these things, so on Saturday I wandered around the local hardware superstore until I found something that I could make work. I ended up purchasing "L" shaped corner braces, 1/2" wide strips of metal configured with two 3" legs. One leg got screwed to the drywall, the other leg provided a shelf to support the panels. I used 2 braces per panel or eight total, the cost for all 8 came to less than $5.

The leg not screwed to the drywall also had two screw holes through it and I inserted a nut and bolt into one of these holes (on each brace) to prevent the panel from sliding off of the end of the leg.

FInally, to prevent the panels from toppling over, I attached a 4" x 1" piece of velcor to the top edge of the rear side of each panel. The corresponding velcro pieces were attached to the wall 4ft above the metal braces.

Overall, it seems to have worked out pretty well. The only downside is that I gave up my 1" + spacing form the wall and instead settled for about 1/2" spacing. But IT'S DONE!

Hope it works OK and doesn't sag; if it does, at least you have a few other ideas to try... Steve