John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi there,

I have done some searching and haven't turned up the one thing i am wondering about. I was on the SAE site looking at the various floating floor configurations, and was wondering if anyone floats a sand filled timber framed floor on rigid fibreglass?

a couple of follow up questions. The front wall of a control room seems as though it would be quite heavy with the glass/doors [if that's where they're going] and soffited main monitors. would all this weight including the sand in the floor compress the fibreglass unevenly and cause sloping and sagging towards the front of the room?

I am quite thrilled to have found this forum as i will be attempting to build a studio in 2005, and i know i will have many questions. i also would like to express my gratitude to all the experts who contribute their time and ideas here to educate the newcomers like myself. thank you.

my goal between now and when construction begins is to come up with a control room design that can be adapted to a variety of spaces and remain a suitable workspace, so i am starting with the floor.

thank you in advance.

-AL

if anyone floats a sand filled timber framed floor on rigid fibreglass?

All the time. The fiberglass used is a special composite made for that purpose.

Regarding uneven loading, that is where calculations come into play. An effective floating partition is not "constructed", it is designed.

Andre

Thanks for your response. I am in the very early stages right now, trying to get some specifics about construction so I can get some numbers together for a budget. I am focusing on the "hows" right now, and at least trying to get the floor right for starters.

AVare wrote: All the time. The fiberglass used is a special composite made for that purpose.

What is this material called?

AVare wrote: Regarding uneven loading, that is where calculations come into play. An effective floating partition is not "constructed", it is designed.

So am I on the right track in my thinking there, that you can't just build what ever you want where ever you want on a floor like this? When designing something like this, since you can't really vary the density of the FG [or maybe you can...don't know yet] is it mostly about weight distribution? Does anyone have any data on this FG material that I could look at?

Thanks again.
-AL

Youa re getting into things PaulWoodlock has gone through in his studio design. Do a search for his name here and read his posts. He is the espert on this.

Kinetics-Noise makes isolators from fiberglass specifically for this. Have a look at their website. Sorry, I don't have the url.

Thanks.

Will do.

These guys do floated floors too -

http://www.vibro-acoustics.com/

http://www.kineticsnoise.com/arch/index.html

http://www.mason-ind.com/architect_engin_index.htm

Enjoy - Steve

al_p wrote:Hi there,

....
a couple of follow up questions. The front wall of a control room seems as though it would be quite heavy with the glass/doors [if that's where they're going] and soffited main monitors. would all this weight including the sand in the floor compress the fibreglass unevenly and cause sloping and sagging towards the front of the room?
.....

Greetings

Now I can access the forum again.....

When designing a floating floor on Elastomer, you need to calculate the weight of everything inside the studio ( dead loads ), as yes there is an uneven load distribution. i.e sometimes walls will hold up a ceiling, sometimes not. Soffit walls are HEAVY ( or should be ), etc,etc,etc,


I'm not sure about floating on fibreglass though....

Whatever you float on, if you want proper isolation, you have to design the natural freqeuncy of the floating floor system to be as low as possible. At least 2 to 4 octaves BELOW the lowest frequency you want to isolate.

For uneven loads on elastomers, you compensate by altering the block spacing and, or, the block sizing to keep the load/area on the blocks even across the floor.

But I'm really not sure how to calculate a natural freqeuncy for a fibreglass floated floor. I'd sure be interested to know how, if there's anyone here who does know.

Paul

p.s. to see how I constructed my floating floor ( with piccies ), see Paul's Studio Build Diary here http://forum.studiotips.com/viewforum.php?f=1