Soundproofing furnace room

[MrBlackthorne]

Hey folks,

Sorry if a similar topic has already been covered here... If it has, could you post the thread link?

I'm currently setting up a new studio in my house in a utility room. We already have a control room area planned out, and we even have a space for a small vocal isolation booth, along with a nice sized rehearsal area.

We are currently building walls around the furnace, so if it kicks on while we're trying to record, we won't get any unwanted noise. We've already knocked out a wall between the utility room and the adjacent laundry room, effectively moving the furnace into the laundry room.

We're concerned about conserving space where the furnace room walls will be - mainly because the furnace area is not huge, and the room isn't that big either.

On both sides of the wall, our plan is to have sheetrock on the outside (fire retardant in the furnace room, just in case) with a sheet of cement board under that. Inside the wall, we're not certain if we should insulate, or leave it just dead air.

We're not all that concerned with music leakage into the control room. As long as the walls are well-sealed, we figure the sheetrock and cement board should do an adequate job keeping most frequencies out. (Still not sure if we should insulate..?) But, as you can imagine, the furnace room is most important because it is unwanted noise.

I'm not worried about soundproofing the studio to the outside world, because the room is in the basement and almost no sound gets outside. The only door to the outside is a heavy fire door to the bulkhead. It is pretty sound-tight. Otherwise, it's my lonely self living here, so I don't have anyone to bother.

Any insight would be appreciated. Space is the big concern...

Thanks!

Rick

[longsoughtfor]

MrBlackthorne - I did double walls between the furnace room and recording space... it is OK but I also added a switch to kill the furnace when I need to.

Kevin.

[Michael Jones]

The furnace in my house sits in a kinda of utility closet. Its pretty small and really just accommodates the furnace, blower and evaporator.
I'm in the process of building a ground-up studio construction project right now which is detached from the house.
My plan there is to have the furnace sit in a utility closet like in my home, and to have that closet inside of a small utility room as well. The closet and utility room will be insulated.
This would effectively put the furnace in a room-within-a-room, and therefore, should provide excellent isolation.

I would think you could do something similar, just be cogncient of the return air, and make sure it's not located within that utility room, or otherwise adversely restricted.