dampening furnace room noise

A

agiledood

New member
We finished our basement about 8 years ago and now that I've converted an old bedroom to my studio, I want some advice for dampening the noise from the adjacent furnace room and doing some extra treatment for the studio. I have a vocal booth in the old closet with three 24x48x2 acoustic panels I built with rockwool on inner studio wall that is adjacent to the furnace and the studio is well treated so when the furnace is off and no one is stomping around upstairs, it's nice and quiet for recording so that's not a big deal. There's a few reasons I want to do this:

- dampen the noise from the furnace room for the studio, the dining room above the furnace room and for the living room in the basement
- isolate some of the noise from the studio so when I'm mixing, it's not as noisy everywhere else in the house
- dampen some of the noise coming from upstairs, especially through the HVAC.

This is what I'm thinking of doing:

- insulate the furnace room walls and ceiling with rockwool, cover it with foil insulation instead of drywall (mostly because of the effort and time, I've never done drywall before. Plus our stairwell in tiny so when we had the basement finished ages ago, they have to cut the sheets into 4 pieces just to get them down here.
- wrap all the duct work in the furnace room with foil insulation (I can get at 'most' of the HVAC piping coming into the studio (see the pics)

I estimated the cost of this to be around $200 - $300.

Best option would be removing the drywall in the studio, installing rockwool, and then adding 2 layers of drywall, but that would likely be a few thousand bucks easily I imagine.

I suppose the question is, is the option I'm considering a waste of time and money given my goal is dampen as much noise as I can as cheaply as I can and not complete soundproofing?

Pic 1 - on the other side of that wall is my studio
Pic 2 - the clearance I have to work with to get at the duct work

IMG_9709.jpgIMG_0688.jpg
 
You don't say what kind of noise you're trying to damp, but I'd guess that this will lower only part of the kind of sound because you probably need to decouple the studio to really keep that sort of hum and rumble from just going through all the joists and studs.
 
Check where the noise actually comes from - as in through the wall, or through the structure, usually the ground. If it's coming directly through the wall, then mass solves a lot of that, so drywall helps. It also propagates through pipework, ductwork, and if it's going through the foundations/concrete slab, then you need to decouple that. That could mean sacrificing a few inches of studio floor with an isolated floor, or physically lifting and isolating the furnace. Sounds like you need to hope it's just coming through the wall.
 
I didn't bother in my studio. Furnace is in the drum room in my basement. I just turn it off when tracking. Drummers are sweaty anyway... lol

But I live in Colorado so the temperatures are not usually very extreme.

Otherwise I agree with Rob.
 
I used a dB meter around the basement, most of the low-end rumble (100 - 130 hz) seems to be vibrations through the wall and ceiling, but the bulk of the ambient noise is the HVAC vent for sure.

When the furnace is switched off, the ambient noise right next to the furnace room in the studio drops about 6 - 8 dB (studio is well treated), and 2 - 3 dB in the family room on the other side of the basement.

I think I'm going to wrap the duct work I can get at with foil insulation and line the walls and ceiling in the furnace room with Rockwool Safe N Sound for now. I'll look for something other than drywall to cover the insulation in the furnace room with. I think foil will be good enough to protect from anything airborne. That should dampen the sound above the furnace room, in my studio, and the open areas in the basement.

I'm also going to be converting part of the basement now that the kids are older and don't use it as a playspace anymore so I can reclaim it and setup my acoustic drums again.

Thanks for all the tips.
 
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