Starting from scratch,newbie help needed!

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:50 am

knightfly wrote:If you can, a rough idea of budget and real world isolation needs would help eliminate some of the methods...

Thanks Steve.

Total budget (start to finish) is around $40k AUD with an absolute ceiling of $50k (that's when a home loan 'top-up' becomes 'refinancing').

The one thing I'm trying to keep in mind is that the room should be considered a rumpus room, not purely a music room. The idea is that when I'm playing my drums, people outside the rumpus room would hear at most a vague background thumping.

Rough (very rough) budget breakdown is as follows:

Drafts, plans, approvals, red tape - < $3k
Construction (labour & materials) - < $30k
Soundproofing & fitout - < $10k (not including a nice Sonor drum kit!)

The room-in-room idea is tempting, but I'm worried mostly about the impact on floor space, and I guess the cost is a slight concern too.

Sounds like the SonicPly might be a bit of a gimic. Given that no-one here has heard of it, I have my suspicions.

Thanks again.

Ben.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:48 pm

Ben, on the Sonic Ply - I'm not saying it won't do what they claim, I just couldn't justify $180 a sheet (if that's what it runs) compared to maybe $16 for THREE sheets of gyprock. The thickness isn't that much different, and there are much better ways of spending money than wasting $160 for each 4 x 8 foot section of wall.

To keep floor space loss to a minimum and still get good isolation, I'd go with my previous suggestion - "Another improvement to standard Aussie walls (brick, furred out wallboard) is to just increase the air gap and double/triple the inner wallboard. "

If you do that, with no shared walls between the rest of the house and the "rumpus" room, you should be fine... Steve

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:01 am

Thanks Steve, I see what you're saying now. I think I'll go with your previous suggestion. Are there any diagrams around of such a method? Just so I can explain it to my draftsperson/builder.

Getting back to ceiling height, what would be the optimal height (if there is one). Remembering that the room width will be about 13 feet. I have a bit of vertical space to play with (probably 14 feet on the high side would be the maximum).

Also, for the 2 windows is double glazing best?

Cheers yet again.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 2:27 pm

Ben, go here -

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... 0Chart.htm

scroll down to "brick veneer" and look at the second example.

Now, look at my modification (attached) this should exceed STC 63, and the brick will help improve the lower freq's not taken into account in the STC method (good for drums)

Just remember about proper caulk, and that there should be close to total separation physically between the brick and the inner wall. If this isn't possible due to something I'm not aware of, you would need to get some Resilient Channel and mount the two layers of wallboard on the channel for isolation.

On dimensions, your length is such that a wider room (16 feet) would allow nearly exact duplication of one of the Sepmeyer ratios, using an average ceiling height of 10 feet. (1:1.6:2.33) - If you don't want to, or cant, do that then you should keep the average ceiling height at 10 feet. That would give you almost 3,000 cubic feet in the room which should sound pretty good. There would be a slight "hole" in room response at around 32 hZ, but basically a pretty even sound.

You would still need to do some wall treatment after the room is up to control flutter echo (parallel walls)

The ceiling needs to have at least 2'9" rise in 13 feet in order to have a 12 degree slope, which John has found is about minimum to eliminate flutter echoes - this will leave only the walls to treat for that problem. If you made the high side 12 feet and the low side 8 feet, you would average 10 feet, control flutter echo, and probably simplify the building somewhat.

On windows, you should use double WINDOWS, each of which is double glazed. The windows will be your weakest link in the sound isolation. You should frame inner and outer windows separately, as shown in the pic here but without tilting the glass.

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... indows.htm

If you can, find two windows that are heavy and two that are slightly lighter in mass, and use one of each for each pair of facing windows. You want the glass in one half of a double window to be a different mass than that of the facing window, for less leakage.

Oops, almost forgot to attach the modified wall pic... Steve

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 8:43 am

Here's a 'before' pic for anyone interested. When the new fence goes in I'll grab another shot...

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 9:28 am

Ben, good pic - it brings up another question though - if you're planning to put the door into the new room about where the porch ends, am I right in assuming that you're going to cut the existing porch back about even with the existing slider, and start your steps down to the new room from there?

Always keep in mind, that whatever you do, you want no physical connections between the existing construction and the new room. Any concrete work should be separate especially. I saw a sound attenuation chart the other day that claimed concrete only attenuates structure-borne sound by about 0.1 dB per 100 feet. Other material weren't much better.

I'm a little concerned about the entrance to the new room - if you were to stand inside the new room, looking out the door and to the left as your picture shows, how far/what is there in that direction? I'm talking about the path alongside your existing building, wondering about neighbors and whether you might need TWO sliders in order to quiet things enough... Steve

Post by **John Sayers** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 9:45 am

Another wall option is to do this Ben.

Because the brick veneer construction starts with the internal tinber walls being built you could line them with double drywall and seal it off BEFORE you add the brick outer layer which is rendered fully on one side only. You can save some space here as well as having the internal walls treated acoustically.

cheers
john

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 10:03 am

John, unless I'm missing something here that woudn't be possible on the side toward the existing construction unless the two were far enough apart to be able to access the new wall from the outside (between the old and new) - In fact, neither of our proposed wall methods would work on that side as far as I can see - from the picture, it doesn't look like there's enough room to separate the new construction by enough to get between walls and add the brick. You'd almost have to do some kind of "tip-up" wall on the common side, or build concrete block wall there, in order to have physically separate outer walls -

So what am I missing here???

Ben, what say you? Is there enough room there for outside access to the part of the new wall that will parallel the old? ... Steve

Post by **John Sayers** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 1:09 pm

Yeah - I see what you mean Steve. If you put up the brick wall first, rendered it on the inside, then stood up the pre drywalled and sealed wall you could do it. The others are fine because you do the timber wall drywalled and sealed and then follow with the brick.

Now connection to the trusses is another matter;);)

cheers
john

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sat Jul 19, 2003 12:46 am

Trusses??!? He wants trusses??!? Man, I though you Aussies were tough, now I'm hearing roof talk... :=)

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 10:43 am

Okay, to clarify (things have changed slightly):

The new building will be standalone. No connection whatsoever to the existing house.
There will be a gap of roughly 2.5 - 3 feet between the two buildings.
The point above means that the decking from the existing loungeroom will 'step down' to the entry point of the new building.
There is still enough room to build the new building, as the fence is being moved (see new pic)

I wish I was able to draw a rough outline of the new building on this pic, but I'm not good enough with graphics programs. Feel free to have a go - it'd be nice to know that people have an idea about what I'm thinking of.
Thanks,

Ben.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:40 pm

Ben, I can't believe I actually took the time to do this crappy drawing in Paint, man what a crude proggie - you'd probably not be
looking at this if it wasn't 93 humid degrees here and I had anything important enough to pull me away from the AC...:=)

Anyway, is this sorta what you're planning? (don't ask me to re-draw it, if you got lucky you got lucky) And Yeah, I know the
perspective sucks, life's a bitch... :=) Steve

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:53 pm

Fantastic! That is pretty much spot on!

Only difference being that the building will actually be extending slightly over the existing fenceline to the right, and the steps you've shown will be slightly different to allow the external door to open (we're trying to come up with a deck design that will allow this).

So from what we've established here, are things looking like they're achievable?

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:35 pm

Achievable? Man, if I can draw ANYTHING with Paint that's even vaguely recognizable, your project should be a piece of cake :=)

Comments on doors - are you planning a two-door entry for sound isolation? If so, why not do the "John thing" and use two exterior insulated glass sliders in tandem? Keeps you from having to put in an elevator :=) plus, with the isolation of the two sliders in tandem followed by the great outdoors, the sound into your existing building would be almost non-existent. Also, since it looks like the distance from the new door to anything else is pretty long, there should be good attenuation of what little bit excapes as far as neighbors are concerned.

Giving yourself that 3 feet of space between buildings will allow you to render both sides of the brick with 1/2" of plaster, which will improve TL somewhat on low end (good for drums)

The only thing still bothering me on the aussie brick veneer/wood frame construction is this: Am I right in the assumption that this brick veneer can't stand on its own, and that there are "ties" every so often that are mortared into the brick and fastened to the wood frame? If so, that would reduce the performance of that wall construction considerably and would have to be compensated for in other ways.

John, am I right on this? Hard ties every so often between brick and frame?

Gotta run for now, DDJ starts @ 04:30 (6 hrs from now) Later... Steve

Ben from Canberra · Post by **Ben from Canberra** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:15 pm

The double sliding doors sound interesting. Does the distance from the exterior wall to the interior wall have to be quite large to accomodate them?

Here's a rough Punch! of the 'current' (I'm getting used to all these changes) plan. Let me know if you think the handrails will cause any problems. I think they would simply be dynabolted to the exterior walls. They are totally optional at this stage (they just make the pic look nice!).