I have a relatively unlimited amount of space to work with in my basement to build a live room/practice space, horizontally, but the ceilings are only about 7' high. I would like for the room to be as completely isolated as possible so as not to bother people upstairs, or more importantly outside. I understand how to do this, if I have all the space in the world. My plan is to build two sets of inner walls with sheetrock and insulation with the outer wall appx. 1 foot away from the cinder block basement wall and the inner wall 6 inches to a foot from that. Lots of dead air, should work. MY problem comes in what to do with the floor and ceiling. I can't afford to lose lots and lots of inches floating and decoupling them b/c I'm 6'3" and still have quite a few years left before I start playing acoustic from a stool all of the time. Everything I read says that that's the way to do it though and I just don't have the luxury. That's my situation, here are my questions.
To decouple the ceilings and floors could I use a product such as sheetblok by auralex?
If so, do I have to entirely cover the floor and ceilings with it or could I cut strips of it and put it directly above and under the walls?
If I do have to use it everywhere is there a cheaper alternative to sheetblok b/c that stuff looks too expensive?
Maybe float the floor and ceiling both an inch or so with sheetblok as the decoupler and an inch of rockwool or 703 (if I can find it) in between?
I will want a window to the control room and haven't read about a good way to do that while keeping your sound isolation, probably just go with the dead air thing though? Maybe extra insulation?
Is a big heavy steel door a good fit for isolation or would a wood door with sheetblok or its substitute suffice?
To be honest with you transmission inside of the house is an issue, but less of an issue than outside. We'd like to be able to practice at any time of day or night and don't want to make the neighbors mad, but not making my wife mad would be pretty sweet too. We're pretty loud when we practice so its going to be a bit of a task. Thank you so much for your time.
Tim
Building my live room/practice space
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timwheat
- Posts: 41
- Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:25 pm
- Location: Peoria, IL
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knightfly
- Senior Member
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- Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 11:11 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
Tim, welcome to the board; we've never had anyone with a low ceilinged basement who wanted to rock out before 
Seriously, you have a couple of flaws in your understanding so far - let's see if we can help.
I understand how to do this, if I have all the space in the world. My plan is to build two sets of inner walls with sheetrock and insulation with the outer wall appx. 1 foot away from the cinder block basement wall and the inner wall 6 inches to a foot from that. Lots of dead air, should work.
From outside to in, you're proposing cinder block (filled, or hollow?), 12" air space, then a wall (wallboard on one side, or both?) then more air space, then another wall (again, wallboard on one side or both?)
If we take worst case, your cinder block will be hollow and you meant to use wallboard on both sides of both added walls - this would yield a wall that consists of (hollow cinder blocks) mass, air, mass, air,(first wall) mass, air, mass, air (second wall) mass, air, mass -
Each combination of mass-air-mass will have its own resonant frequency, at which that part of the wall will be very weak; it may even AMPLIFY the sound at that frequency. This worst case example has 3 individual mass-air-mass components, plus the mass-air-mass resonances between the inner cinder block mass and the outer first wall mass, plus the one between the inner first wall mass and the outer, second wall mass - in short, the whole thing will be very "massy", and NOT in a GOOD way -
What you need for maximum isolation with minimum materials, is much simpler than that; you want mass, air, mass. Period. No more. Nada. If you want to add more, you should add more leaves of mass to one or the other existing mass. Anything else will WORSEN your isolation compared to what you can get with a specific amount of material.
Here is a TESTED example of different wall constructions - note the difference in isolation, and the fact that you can actually IMPROVE isolation by REMOVING material, if it's in the WRONG PLACE -
http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk/tloss.htm
Look at the wall examples at the bottom of the page for what I'm talking about -
Windows between rooms - again, mass-air-mass - for best iso, something like the 63 dB wall in the above link, with separately framed glasses - one layer of glass coincident with the wallboard for each frame, glass thickness at least 1/3 the total wallboard thickness (glass is roughly 3 times the mass) and as wide an air gap as you can - 12" is not excessive if you have the space. (so the total wall thickness would be about 13", all but the glass filled with insulation, snug fill.
For what you want, you WILL need to do a fully floated and decoupled room; before we can figure out the best way to do that with your height limitations, I need more info -
If there is already wallboard on your ceiling (in the basement) it will likely have to come off anyway; one, it's probably done wrong for isolation; two, there's probably NOT enough insulation - 3, no resilient mounting - 4, one continuous plane of wallboard between rooms (no-no) and 5, if you cut the existing wallboard out carefully, you can re-use it to place more mass up against the subfloor before you re-do the ceiling from top to bottom. All this will go toward best isolation with least amount of lost headroom.
Once you get the lower wallboard removed (score along the joists, or use a rotozip - try to remove in 4' x joist spacing-sized pieces (14-1/2" for 16" centers, 22-1/2" wide for 24" centers)
Next, I need to know the size of your floor/ceiling joists, and their spacing between each other, and the total unsupported length of the joists (their span) - this will tell me how much more mass we can add, and where)
MLV - might call these guys - found this by googling industrial curtain, there were several more that might be closer to you -
Is a big heavy steel door a good fit for isolation or would a wood door with sheetblok or its substitute suffice?
If you have room two solid core doors with good seals and an air space -
If you notice, the physics of sound control don't change whether they're horizontal or vertical - mass, air, mass. More mass, more space, better isolation. There's more, but that's the gist of it all.
The sooner you can get me specs on your existing ceiling, the sooner we can figure out what will work best for your situation... Steve
Seriously, you have a couple of flaws in your understanding so far - let's see if we can help.
I understand how to do this, if I have all the space in the world. My plan is to build two sets of inner walls with sheetrock and insulation with the outer wall appx. 1 foot away from the cinder block basement wall and the inner wall 6 inches to a foot from that. Lots of dead air, should work.
From outside to in, you're proposing cinder block (filled, or hollow?), 12" air space, then a wall (wallboard on one side, or both?) then more air space, then another wall (again, wallboard on one side or both?)
If we take worst case, your cinder block will be hollow and you meant to use wallboard on both sides of both added walls - this would yield a wall that consists of (hollow cinder blocks) mass, air, mass, air,(first wall) mass, air, mass, air (second wall) mass, air, mass -
Each combination of mass-air-mass will have its own resonant frequency, at which that part of the wall will be very weak; it may even AMPLIFY the sound at that frequency. This worst case example has 3 individual mass-air-mass components, plus the mass-air-mass resonances between the inner cinder block mass and the outer first wall mass, plus the one between the inner first wall mass and the outer, second wall mass - in short, the whole thing will be very "massy", and NOT in a GOOD way -
What you need for maximum isolation with minimum materials, is much simpler than that; you want mass, air, mass. Period. No more. Nada. If you want to add more, you should add more leaves of mass to one or the other existing mass. Anything else will WORSEN your isolation compared to what you can get with a specific amount of material.
Here is a TESTED example of different wall constructions - note the difference in isolation, and the fact that you can actually IMPROVE isolation by REMOVING material, if it's in the WRONG PLACE -
http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk/tloss.htm
Look at the wall examples at the bottom of the page for what I'm talking about -
Windows between rooms - again, mass-air-mass - for best iso, something like the 63 dB wall in the above link, with separately framed glasses - one layer of glass coincident with the wallboard for each frame, glass thickness at least 1/3 the total wallboard thickness (glass is roughly 3 times the mass) and as wide an air gap as you can - 12" is not excessive if you have the space. (so the total wall thickness would be about 13", all but the glass filled with insulation, snug fill.
For what you want, you WILL need to do a fully floated and decoupled room; before we can figure out the best way to do that with your height limitations, I need more info -
If there is already wallboard on your ceiling (in the basement) it will likely have to come off anyway; one, it's probably done wrong for isolation; two, there's probably NOT enough insulation - 3, no resilient mounting - 4, one continuous plane of wallboard between rooms (no-no) and 5, if you cut the existing wallboard out carefully, you can re-use it to place more mass up against the subfloor before you re-do the ceiling from top to bottom. All this will go toward best isolation with least amount of lost headroom.
Once you get the lower wallboard removed (score along the joists, or use a rotozip - try to remove in 4' x joist spacing-sized pieces (14-1/2" for 16" centers, 22-1/2" wide for 24" centers)
Next, I need to know the size of your floor/ceiling joists, and their spacing between each other, and the total unsupported length of the joists (their span) - this will tell me how much more mass we can add, and where)
MLV - might call these guys - found this by googling industrial curtain, there were several more that might be closer to you -
Is a big heavy steel door a good fit for isolation or would a wood door with sheetblok or its substitute suffice?
If you have room two solid core doors with good seals and an air space -
If you notice, the physics of sound control don't change whether they're horizontal or vertical - mass, air, mass. More mass, more space, better isolation. There's more, but that's the gist of it all.
The sooner you can get me specs on your existing ceiling, the sooner we can figure out what will work best for your situation... Steve
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timwheat
- Posts: 41
- Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:25 pm
- Location: Peoria, IL
Yeah, I've been reading this for months and I read about a zillion things on basements before I came with my questions. 
You know, last night when I was laying in my bed I knew that what I was thinking about doing was wrong. I had actually overthought what I wanted to do. OK, so after reading your post and talking with my friend who is a carpenter, here goes again.
Cinder block walls on two walls on the outside, lets say hollow, b/c they sound hollow when you tap on them and I'm not sure of another better way to figure out if they are. If you do I'd be more than happy to learn. Inside of that we're going to float the floor, no second wall like I was thinking before. Right now we're thinking of floating the floor 2" of concrete on top of 2" of roxul, I've gotta sacrifice a little soundproof for space here. Can I just float on 2x4 studs here or do I need to use something else? Here is where my carpenter friend comes in handy, and I'm not sure of the idea, but it sounds like it'll work. He wants to build the ceiling first. 2x4 studs with 2, maybe 3, 5/8" sheetrock on the inside. Then, we frame two of the walls, on the regular floor. His idea is to have his whole crew who works for him there and actually have them pick up the ceiling while he secures the two walls to the floated floor, and then build our other two walls accordingly. With his measurements he plans to have the top of the floated ceiling one inch away from the floor joists therefore isolating it from the room above and having a cozy little two leaf system in place there. Sounded good to me, other than the heavy lifting part, but that was his plan.
On the walls floated on the floor I'm planning on 3 layers of 5/8" sheetrock on both sides, from what I understand there's no such thing as overkill here. So that, along with some caulking and a good door, should isolate that room. I think I understand what you were saying about windows too. I just install the window with one pane of glass on each side and stuff roxul all around it and seal it.
The rest of the basement is going to be kind of a lounge/hang out/family area, so I'm thinking another wall to separate the jamming room from the family area is OK? The cinder block wall closest to it would be 35 feet away, plus it would make kind of a good closet for equipment. This wall would span across the entire basement and would be 3-4 feet from the outer wall of the floated room.
OK to sum up, my questions.
Is this idea feasible and functional?
Does having hollow cinder blocks mess up everything?
Do I put sheetrock on both sides of the floated walls?
Do I put sheetrock on both or just one side of the floated ceiling?
Is my 4" total of floated floor enough to make a difference?
Do I float the floor on 2x4's or do I need uboats or something?
Should I float a riser inside the floated room for the drums?
Would it help even more to isolate amps etc. in the floated room?
Should I just skip all of this floating whole rooms and just float the drums and amps and build really good walls?
Is my second wall seperating the jam room from the family room OK or no?
That should be plenty for now. I'm afraid I run myself around in circles sometimes. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! When this place gets built (And it works
) we'll definitely be sending in a donation. THANKS AGAIN
Tim
You know, last night when I was laying in my bed I knew that what I was thinking about doing was wrong. I had actually overthought what I wanted to do. OK, so after reading your post and talking with my friend who is a carpenter, here goes again. Cinder block walls on two walls on the outside, lets say hollow, b/c they sound hollow when you tap on them and I'm not sure of another better way to figure out if they are. If you do I'd be more than happy to learn. Inside of that we're going to float the floor, no second wall like I was thinking before. Right now we're thinking of floating the floor 2" of concrete on top of 2" of roxul, I've gotta sacrifice a little soundproof for space here. Can I just float on 2x4 studs here or do I need to use something else? Here is where my carpenter friend comes in handy, and I'm not sure of the idea, but it sounds like it'll work. He wants to build the ceiling first. 2x4 studs with 2, maybe 3, 5/8" sheetrock on the inside. Then, we frame two of the walls, on the regular floor. His idea is to have his whole crew who works for him there and actually have them pick up the ceiling while he secures the two walls to the floated floor, and then build our other two walls accordingly. With his measurements he plans to have the top of the floated ceiling one inch away from the floor joists therefore isolating it from the room above and having a cozy little two leaf system in place there. Sounded good to me, other than the heavy lifting part, but that was his plan.
On the walls floated on the floor I'm planning on 3 layers of 5/8" sheetrock on both sides, from what I understand there's no such thing as overkill here. So that, along with some caulking and a good door, should isolate that room. I think I understand what you were saying about windows too. I just install the window with one pane of glass on each side and stuff roxul all around it and seal it.
The rest of the basement is going to be kind of a lounge/hang out/family area, so I'm thinking another wall to separate the jamming room from the family area is OK? The cinder block wall closest to it would be 35 feet away, plus it would make kind of a good closet for equipment. This wall would span across the entire basement and would be 3-4 feet from the outer wall of the floated room.
OK to sum up, my questions.
Is this idea feasible and functional?
Does having hollow cinder blocks mess up everything?
Do I put sheetrock on both sides of the floated walls?
Do I put sheetrock on both or just one side of the floated ceiling?
Is my 4" total of floated floor enough to make a difference?
Do I float the floor on 2x4's or do I need uboats or something?
Should I float a riser inside the floated room for the drums?
Would it help even more to isolate amps etc. in the floated room?
Should I just skip all of this floating whole rooms and just float the drums and amps and build really good walls?
Is my second wall seperating the jam room from the family room OK or no?
That should be plenty for now. I'm afraid I run myself around in circles sometimes. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! When this place gets built (And it works
) we'll definitely be sending in a donation. THANKS AGAINTim
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timwheat
- Posts: 41
- Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:25 pm
- Location: Peoria, IL
Hey, check this stuff out. Ever heard of it?
http://www.quietsolution.com/constructi ... tml?google
If its really as good as it says, better than rc, you should be able just to slap that right onto the floor joists. Sounds too good to be true though. Thanks for your time. I've gotta go to work anyway.
Tim
http://www.quietsolution.com/constructi ... tml?google
If its really as good as it says, better than rc, you should be able just to slap that right onto the floor joists. Sounds too good to be true though. Thanks for your time. I've gotta go to work anyway.
Tim
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sharward
- Moderator
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- Contact:
Asked and answered...
This question has been answered already.Hey, check this stuff out. Ever heard of it?
So much great information here, but sometimes it's a little tricky finding it all.
Hope that helps...
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knightfly
- Senior Member
- Posts: 6976
- Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 11:11 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
Tim, as best I recall those panels run from $125 to $200 EACH - you can do double framed, triple wallboard each side walls (4' x 8', same as one panel of quiet rock) INCLUDING FRAMING, for about $60 as compared to about $300 for the same coverage.
If you mess up just one caulk or mud joint with the quiet panels, it's all the way through your wall surface; if you mess up one joint using 3 layer wallboard, there's two more to make up for it.
One quiet rock panel, besides giving your WALLET a hernia, will do the same to your back - try about 215 pounds per panel vs. 75 pounds for each 4x8 sheet of 5/8 wallboard -
Hope that helps decide... Steve
If you mess up just one caulk or mud joint with the quiet panels, it's all the way through your wall surface; if you mess up one joint using 3 layer wallboard, there's two more to make up for it.
One quiet rock panel, besides giving your WALLET a hernia, will do the same to your back - try about 215 pounds per panel vs. 75 pounds for each 4x8 sheet of 5/8 wallboard -
Hope that helps decide... Steve