John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi All,

I'm just beginning my journey down the path of planning a practice room withing 1/2 of my 2 car double-brick garage. I have done a lot of reading on this and other forums and have read Rod Gervais' Book.

At this stage I am just trying to understand how the existing double-brick (ie 2 bricks thick) wall of my garage can be incorporated into a 2-leaf system. Would anyone be able to provide any info/ thoughts/ diagrams/links to point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Matt
Melbourne

Hi Matt. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

Your wall basically acts mostly like a single-leaf, but also a bit like a coupled two-leaf. But is it really two brick leaves, separated by an air gap? Sometimes it can look like that, even when it isn't.

- Stuart -

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your reply. I know my post was a little half-baked (1/4?) so I'll try again

I am looking at building a space within my garage to serve a couple of purposes. First and foremost, it will be a space for me to freely practice drums until all hours, and have small band rehearsals (jazz/ folk styles). It will also serve as a part time office space.

I have been in the research and planning phase for a while now, but keen to nail down a solid plan and get started. Budget for the project is $6-9K.

My nearest neighbours are approximately 6m from the back of my garage (on the side of one of the double-thickness brick walls). The living room of my house is attached to the garage, but I am looking at building on the far side, so there will be approx 3m of open space (a car space) between the outer wall of the room and the living room, and a brick-veneer wall.

I have attached a plan of the garage and proposed floor space that I can utilise. The floor is a concrete slab. the roof is pitched and the internal ceiling is currently also pitched with a single layer of plasterboard attached to the joists.

The grey shaded section on the image below is the proposed area (2.9m x 5.54m)
I'm trying to work out how much usable floor space I might end up with based on the width of the wall construction. After all the reading I have done, it is clear that a 2 leaf system is the most effective for isolation of the frequencies that will cause an issue for me, however it may not actually leave me with much usable floor space (after also incorporating the low roof height at one end of the room).

So my initial question was around utilising the existing brick walls as the outer leaf in a 2-leaf system. I haven't come across any examples of this in my research. Does the brickwork need to be sealed somehow? Do I just run plasterboard flush against this wall and us that as the sealing layer, and the brickwork will act as the insulation?

Any guidance or information would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi, I'm at the very early stages (dreaming ) of a similar project so interested in answers to your question.

My garage is single brick (6m x 6m x 2.5m) attached to the side of the house and I'm planning a room within of ~6m x 4m.

From what I understand the external brick wall is the first leaf. I found this post discussing something similar with a diagram which might help: Please help confirm wall structure design.

On that thread adding insulation to the wall was suggested, preferably without framing. How would you do that? wall hooks and wire maybe? Also interested to know if the wall needs any other preparation, sealing, etc. And then I guess I'll need to work out what type of insulation is best/available/best value.

Thanks