Treatment for Porl and Patrick

[porl]

Thanks for the detailed reply, Steve.

I can answer some questions now and others I can get back to you with.

do you mean to tell me that the lightweight, 25 gauge steel studs are as ridiculously priced as wood 4x2's? That's even scarier than 5x costs on drywall panels...

At the moment we are simply looking at a website that says "steel C studs" in the dimensions and thicknesses we need. I have never seen steel studs before and have so far not been able to find a picture of one. It's pretty hard to know - at the prices we've seen for the spec steel studs are indeed more expensive than wood.

these existing block walls - are they hollow block, or filled, or solid,

My feeling is that they're solid. I'll come back to you on that though - there are a couple of bricks lying around which we can have a proper look at.

on the existing ceiling joists, are they all the same height from the floor or is the main, wide one deeper (vertically) too?

On our drawings, directly below the ceiling plan is a side elevation of the wall to ceiling (ceiling detail side elevation) they show that the main joist is 490mm thick and secondary joists are 280mm thick.

On the existing single wooden partition wall, could you describe its construction in more detail? (materials, sizes, condition - are there any holes, etc, does it go completely to the ceiling joists, is it sealed to them, ANY DETAILS you can think of, don't assume ANY detail is not worth mentioning.

This wall connects to another room (not ours) occupied by a musician. Though he only operates maybe one weekend per month his noise will DEFINITELY be an issue if we happen to be recording at the same time. The general working practice in the builiding is that everyone is responsible for their own noise - hence if his noise becomes a problem to us (or anyone else) he will need to take the proper measures like us. We will be asking him to sort out this wall in particular. So here it goes... (not good news i'm afraid)

The wall is a single wooden 2"x4" stud partition covered either side with a single leaf of 1/2" plasterboard which goes from floor to ceiling and is attached to the secondary joists. There is no evidence that the inside is insulated at all. The condition is very poor. Plasterboard is nailed into the stud uprights, is in poor condition. No sealant of any type has been used and there are air gaps all over it - particluarly between the base and top frame and the ceiling and floor. Basically a sheet of paper would probably be better.

Your suggestions sound for the construction sound great especially the front wall. Before you go any further I would like to update our plans (it's nothing major it's just that I've noticed a vertical beam missing adjacent to the drain down pipe).

Anyway gotta go. Thanks for all your continued work - we appreciate it very much.

Porl.

[knightfly]

Porl, thanks for the update - sorry I missed the depth thing on your drawings. BTW, an "elevation" is a side view, whereas a "plan" is normally looking down from above -

On the steel studs, if you can find a local commercial drywall/insulation contractor you'll probably have better luck - these things are just really thin steel, typically 25 gauge, and shouldn't cost but a fraction of wood stud prices.

Your neighbor's crappy wall may be a GOOD thing - if it's that bad, it will leak air to the point you can ignore it and not worry about creating a "triple leaf" wall.

Britain's "establishment" was smart, they finished slowly taking away ALL your guns before they REALLY started fucking you... Steve

[porl]

Steve - I went out and did a little more searching for better prices. Hopefully now we can spare our poor little queen the gun

Steel systems are still fairly elusive at your spec ie, 25 guage.
I spoke direct to the manufacturer and their least guage is .55mm

I was quoted £82.80 for 30 3000x50mm uprights
I was quoted £17.28 for 8 3000mm x 52mm track

I also asked for plasterboard prices, this is what i got:

19mm thickness £6.99 per sheet of 8'x2'
12.5 mm thickness £5.50 per sheet 8'x4'

celotex

25mm thickness £16.80 per sheet of 8'x4'
10mm thickness £11.63 per sheet of 8'x4'

resilient channel

they call it resilient bar it is 50mm wide with 15mm offsets (?)
for a 3 metre length I was quoted £3.30


re: ceiling plans, original drawings were correct.
I can confirm that the block work walls in our room are indeed solid. They are known as "breeze block" over here. I'm sure you guys call it something else though

Anyway hope this adds to the soup.

Cheers,

Porl

[knightfly]

Porl, here’s what I’ve got so far - First, that sounds better for framing costs - .55 mm = 0.0216535", which is very close to 25 gauge, slightly heavier if I remember correctly. Using the steel studs, your cost per stud is less than 3# pounds per stud, where the 4x2 wood will run about 7.5 pounds per stud at the prices you first gave. You would see an added savings considering you'd not need to also use the Resilient bars if using steel studs, because they are flexible enough to decouple the wall leaves without.

You are going to need to either purchase or hire a screw gun either way, the only difference will be what type of screws you buy and the way you fasten each layer of wallboard. If Laminating type wallboard screws are as difficult to find in your area as they are in mine (industrial suppliers only) then using the steel studs will make multi-layer walls easier to put up (since you don't use laminating screws in multi-layer walls if using steel studs) as well as cheaper.

Am I correct in assuming that you will put some kind of door in the one wall that isn't there at all yet? That's the only side I can see any possiblity of putting a door in. If so, and you want decent isolation between your control room and the drum/vocal room, that will need to be the subject of some serious thought as well...

Just a thought - does Merrie Aulde England also tax you on anything you buy thru the internet? There are a couple of things you may need to acquire that way, and it would be good to know how that is handled tax-wise.

Ceiling frame should be 2x8 on 16" centers -

30 U-boats @ 3.3# = 99# for floor suspension

Ceiling w/2x8 frame, 4 x 12mm wallboard should weigh about 1200 pounds, about 1350 pounds including mineral wool between the two leaves of double-layer 12mm wallboard.

Rough estimate of materials costs for steel framing, all wallboard, all floor material but Nothing for insulation and no doors or windows - 1600 pounds so far. I’ve still not had time enough to do any drawings, it would be easier if I only had to do them once so I’m trying to get all the basic stuff out of the way first.

One thing I’m wondering about - what are the two of you going to do about tools? If you’ve not built anything before, you’re really going to be hurting for tools, do you have any indulgent friends who have carpentry tools? Just something else to think about - if I seem like I’m rambling, it’s been a fun week so far… Steve

[porl]

Steve,

Correct about the door. We are looking into whether or not two sets of large patio style UPVC doors are the way to go (more costly between £500 s/h and £2000 new for the ready made assemblies) or whether we should build 2 single solid doors and leave apertures in the wall for ready made double glazed windows (cheaper)

Whichever the option - we would definitely like to have a window.

If you have any links for door designs we would be grateful to see them. We've been reading all the door threads on the site and are familiar with the basics - seals, material specs, general installation principles. Any gaps in our knowledge will no doubt become evident as discussion goes on.

With regards to tools, there are lots of willing lenders around (friends & family) All prices we have quoted have been inclusive of all tax. In terms of supplies we are talking to real people now as opposed to the internet.

Also if steel studs are cheaper and just as effective, that is defnitely the way we will go.

Cheers Porl.

[knightfly]

This is by far the best single link to the most information on acoustics I've seen apart from John's various pages - click on doors, then click the links within that - they actually sell this stuff, have reasonable prices, and are located in your part of the world.

http://www.customaudiodesigns.co.uk/help.htm

If possible, you need to consider a wider distance between leaves of your new wall so you get better isolation (because of the door.)

The tradeoffs between solid core doors with small to medium sized windows in them, and sliding type doors, are that sliders give more open feel with better visibility at a cost of probably at least 10 dB or more isolation. With either type, being used to move drums through they should be a minimum of 36" openable area, which means at least a 6 foot slider. Solid core with custom made windows will cost less and give better isolation.

You're the one who will have to decide which is more important to you in the end.

I've still to get enough info to give you a final method for ceiling construction, I need to order a CD-Rom of the International Building Codes - probably will order that in a day or two, should be here in about 7-10 days.

That's about it for now... Steve

[porl]

Steve,

Again the high prices for materials are forcing us to consider alternatives.

For windows:

The prices for 8mm and 10mm laminated glass is proving prohibitive (about £400 for a m2 for both sheets)
We have been offered some clear perspex which could easily be cut into the sizes we need at the thickness we need ie. 9mm and 12mm. The advantage of this is that it will cost us nothing. What are your feelings about using this as an alternative?

For doors:

Thanks for the link: there are some useful products. Again the doorsets have been quoted to us at £825 each. Hence a two door system would be £1650!!

We are looking to build some solid core doors using a similar spec to the doorsets advertised. What I would like to know is do the doors have to be angled at one end towards each other or is there a scenario where this isn't necessary ie. if the doors are built from different materials and thicknesses etc.?

Cheers,

Porl.

[knightfly]

"What are your feelings about using this as an alternative? " -

Actually, I just spent about an hour trying to find actual TL figures on Perspex, and came up empty. From what little I know about plastics/lexan/perspex, they are lighter weight than glass and, barring some "magical" properties, wouldn't do as good a job based purely on mass. I guess if it's free, you could build custom doors with frames set to take standard glass sizes and try the free Perspex - that way, if it didn't work as well as hoped you could replace one layer at a time, which would also spread out the cost...

"do the doors have to be angled at one end towards each other or is there a scenario where this isn't necessary ie. if the doors are built from different materials and thicknesses etc.? " -

If you're short on space, the doors don't HAVE to be splayed - at least in the sense that you don't HAVE to do ANYTHING - The things that improve Transmission Loss have been fairly well documented here - mass, dissimilarity of leaves, non-parallelism of walls, hermetic sealing, etc - these work whether you're talking about glass, walls, doors, ceilings, floors, they're all the same as far as laws of physics.

As with any sound attenuating partition, the more things you do right the better the results - If there are certain of the "to do" list that can't be done, you can compensate somewhat by exagerating others on the list. For example, if you can't splay the doors, that probably also means you can't spread the distance between them, so you would need to pay even closer attention to adding mass, better seals (always a problem), absorption between the two wall leaves, and utilizing dissimilar mass/materials.

I don't envy you the job ahead of you - going from no building experience to building a precision structure, especially movable partitions such as doors, is a serious project. I think you will be able to accomplish your task, but every step of the way will need to be carefully thought out and even more carefully completed.

I think the next thing we need is for you to post a more complete floor plan of your TOTAL area and indicate just how much floor space you can afford to lose to a wall/door construction.

In the meantime, I'm waiting on the IBC CD-Rom for legality of the ceiling I'd be proposing. I'll also work on some generic home-brew door designs as I get time... Steve

[porl]

That's fine, Steve.

Yes, we are pretty daunted by the building, but all your info makes it easier.We'll post up some pics as we go along so anyone interested can see how the complete novices do it, how much it costs and where to get the materials from in the UK.

I'll post up some scale plans of the whole space in the next 48 hours. I'm working with Adobe Illustrator on Mac. Do you have any preferences as to how we post it up? The choices would be as a .gif or a .pdf style attachment.

If you have any preference, let me know.

Thanks,

Porl.

[knightfly]

Either format is fine, I can mark up a gif easier though, since I only have the reader for adobe... Steve

[porl]

Steve,

You can view the scale plans of our entire space at this address in gif format:

http://www.btinternet.com/~samandporl/C ... plans.html

Again, let me know if there's any more info you need and we will get it to you.

cheers,

Porl.

[knightfly]

Porl, that's fine for now - I'm even further behind on life in general than I usually am, so this may take a few days. Plus, I'm not sure how long the IBC CD-Roms will take to get here... Steve

[porl]

No problem, Steve. Appreciate the help - Porl.

[porl]

hi Steve, how's it going ? any luck with the building regs yet ? - porl.

[knightfly]

Not so far, Porl - I've had some mail order places take a week just to send things out, when I'd paid for "next day air" shipping, others send it out 5 minutes before you call.

My own schedule (work, home ) has been unduly hectic for the last couple of weeks also.

Any chance you could cruise some of my other posts on wall construction and try a tentative drawing yourself? I'm much quicker at "critiquing" than drawing :=) ... Steve