Noise Leak, Help?

[The Engineer]

I have a 4X5 booth (closet) I'm using basically normal house doors and the spaces between the door and the wall and the door and the floor causes leaking into the mixing room, any way I can fix this? Use cauk? Put towels in the crack on the floor? Hahaha

[mshilarious]

Originally Posted by The Engineer

I have a 4X5 booth (closet) I'm using basically normal house doors and the spaces between the door and the wall and the door and the floor causes leaking into the mixing room, any way I can fix this? Use cauk? Put towels in the crack on the floor? Hahaha

You could use caulk, but it'd be tough to open the door.

Go to your local hardware store and buy a threshold with a vinyl seal and some weatherstripping. Pretty cheap stuff.

If that doesn't work, then get a solid-core exterior door. Not so cheap

[The Engineer]

Thanks mshilarious, I'll try that and see if it works.

[Dani Pace]

Interior doors are hollow and made of pretty thin materal, this works like a resonator. You can cut holes (one about 3 inches down from the top,another about 3 inches below where the doornob is mounted) make the holes 1" to 2" in diameter, fill the space inside the door with celulose insulation, ( the stuff that looks like ground up paper,) then plug the holes. This wont completely soundproof the door but it will cut down a lot of sound transfer through the door. Felt weather stripping around the caseing will help too. This works pretty well and is a lot cheaper than buying a new door.

[Beatles]

I was thinking of doing the same thing, but instead of cellulose, I was considerering filling the door with sand. Anyone ever tried this?

[Jeff_D]

One thing to keep in mind- adding a heavier door- whether buying a new solid door or by filling your existing door with sand will add alot of stress to the hinges- the top one in particular. Most residential interior doors only have 2 hinges to begin with. I would recomend adding a third hinge in the middle or maybe even 2 additional hinges (equally spaced) to pick up the extra weight.

Do a search for magnetic door seals too.

[jpw23]

Those interior doors are not always hollow......most of the time they have a honeycombed cardboard filler to keep the inner and outer panels from flexing....this would make filling it with anything almost impossible.....just my 2cents worth.

[The Engineer]

Will the celulose insulation make my door sag? And yes, my door is hollow, alot of noise leaks through the cracks and also it being hollow doesn't help.

[DigitalDon]

Go to http://www.mcmastercar.com and do a search for "Automatic-Sealing Door Bottoms" Then go to the bottom of the page that comes up. This is what I use on my vocal booth and it works much better than the blanket I used to throw at the bottom of the door
It's a spring loaded sweeper at the bottom of the door. When the door opens it lifts up. When the door closes a small rod presses against the door frame (hinge side) and forces the sweeper down. We use these at work too in a chemical testing lab I work in. Works great.

DD

[The Engineer]

Crazy how you found something like that. Haha Thanks though, I appreciate it.

[Innovations]

Seals first and foremost, but if that is not enough and you don't want to replace the door you could use it as the middle of a mass-air-mass barrier by attaching, for example, some half inch MDF on each side.

Another flanking path for sound is the door hardware itself...that big 2 and a half inch hole! so you might go with surfact mounted hardware and spring hinges.