"hermetic" sealed doors

[genericperson]

other parts of my iso booth are marching along, but i'm working on the door(s).

my current idea is a metal door on the outside, then a glass door you would find on the outside of a house on the inside door.

i like the glass one, because they seem to have somewhat of a seal to them.

but i'd really like a door with a seal like a refrigerator. i was buying a soda at the sandwich shop the other day and started getting jealous of the soda fridge!

can you make a suction seal like that?

besides, the home depot metal door would be a custom order at about $260 USD and about the same for the custom-sized glass "house" door. so that's getting up over $500 USD, which seems like a lot to spend for a setup that isn't even blessed and sanctified by the acoustics gurus.

an overly would be nice, but they are thousands of dollars. anybody price a wenger door? or is there some kick-butt $300-500 door solution that i should know about?

[z60611]

but i'd really like a door with a seal like a refrigerator. i was buying a soda at the sandwich shop the other day and started getting jealous of the soda fridge! can you make a suction seal like that?

Probably. You can certainly have one made for you
For example if you scroll down to the bottom of this page where it says Four Sided Assembly
http://www.thomasregister.com/olc/65861502/a.htm

The problem with those is that although thermally they are great because they are air tight, sound can easily go through the thin flexible rubber membrane. Compression seals don't suffer from that because after compression the surface area of the seals is much smaller.

These magnetic seals are a little better than fridge seals:
http://www.customaudiodesigns.co.uk/seals/magnetic.htm

Glue on seals tend to fall off eventually:
http://www.customaudiodesigns.co.uk/seals/adhesive.htm

There's lots of good seals here:
http://www.zerointernational.com/

A thermally broken sill may or may not be a good thing.

A standard interior door isn't going to do much. They're thin, hollow, and have a lot of air traveling under and around them. One of my interior doors (that's always open to hide this) has a crack in one side that I can push on to see into the door.

But a standard exterior door will. (the seals).

Solid core standard exterior doors in their own frames are the easiest and best for the money. I've seen many a thread about people less industrious than Paul Woodlock who've started on rooms and it's been an on going struggle to get to the next step. So anything that saves time, and works well, has got to be a good thing.

Some people have found 200lb steel fire doors (filled with concrete) at the junk yard.

Next up we have DIY heavy doors, such as the Rod Gervais design (rubber car trunk seals, automatic door closers, lead sheets), and the Paul Woodlock design (multi layer heavy door, dual rows of cheap seals, manual compression latches, airlock).

I've been waiting to see someone from New York build a door with an octapus compression latch (one handle, eight compression latches). I've seen them on a few apartment doors to keep burglars out.

And for those of us who can afford to drop $2000 to $4000 US on a door, there's high performance acoustical doors.


I just measured the glass storm door on the front of my house (Radio Shack SLM, slow), on a windy snow stormy night
a) with the door open 63db(C)
b) with the door closed 52db(C)