buying and house suitable for acoustic isolation

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psmurf

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Hi all, I'm looking at old houses - townhouses, duplexes and some detached. These are all from around 1875ish and are almost all brick with plaster walls (and cellulite or no insulation ... I really have no idea what's inside the walls). I'm looking at the old stuff cause these places really inspire me ...

I want a space to practice loud guitars and drums, and knightfly had responded to some questions of mine a while back saying that it should be possible to build a small space in the basement of a modern townhouse that would allow for playing drums at night for a couple of thousand without getting any death threats from the neighbors. A big drawback with these old places is that they really don't have basements ... just cellars meant for the boilers and storage. Another drawback is that these places are typically 13-14 feet "wide", which potentially limits the dimensions of the room. Also I imagine that older, dried out wood is more sound conducting.

A plus is that most still have plaster instead of drywall, which should suck up low frequencies a lot better than drywall from what I've heard.

Some of these places have garages, but I'd rather not use the garage since they would be lacking heating/cooling.

The room I want to build would be maybe 11' by 13' or so, maybe a little longer and would probably be put on the second floor of the house. I have no idea how I would tie in the HVAC. Some of these places still use hot water radiators and have no central A/C ... so in that case I would probably remove the radiator in the room and use space heaters and fans. I understand I would need a floating floor and ceiling and probably staggered stud construction with multiple layers of drywall (I'll put together some pontential schematics after narrowing down the house search).

any thoughts suggested - both about the house and room
 
one specific question

how much clearance do I need between the sound isolated room and the existing walls and ceiling?
 
Forget 1875.

Think 1995-present.

Magnitudes of order easier to work on. Modern electrical systems. Dimensional lumber you can go buy at any Home Depot.

Sounds like you're looking downtown. Get out away from the city. You wanna play LOUD GUITARS AND DRUMS!

How many times do you want the cops over after you have spent $2-3 grand and still not got there???

I don't know who told you plaster "sucks up" lows. It ain't so. Mass can contain the energy, but any crack or door opening or window will leak that energy.

Fiberglass or Rockwool and dampening absorb lows, converting the energy into heat.
 
and would probably be put on the second floor of the house.
Click to expand...


I understand I would need a floating floor and ceiling and probably staggered stud construction with multiple layers of drywall....
Click to expand...

These 2 statements do NOT mix. First off, what you are talking about is the same thing as a floating ROOM...not just a floating floor. Same in regards to weight. Prepare yourself for hiring a structural engineer, as old 1800 buildings would PROBABLY have to be structurally reinforced to handle the load.
Not only that, but second floor construction is FAR more difficult to build an isolated space, as structural sound transmission through the existing floor to other rooms and even the outdoors can be a devil to deal with. Even with a floating floor, because the existing wood floor acts as a membrane.
Second, why would you use staggered stud and floating floor. Unless you are using the roll out type floating floor with iso pads already within the roll out insulation between walls, and even then, staggered stud walls are for partitioning of adjacent rooms, and if these rooms are on the same floor membrane structural transmission from room to room may happen regardless of a floating floor. Also, f any existing walls are the second leaf of any studio room, then staggered stud makes no sense. You need to do some investigation on the implications of iso construction before making decisions on real estate. There are many considerations for building a studio in existing buildings. Unless you have the budget for overcoming all limitations of 1800 construction, I would think about what Csus said. He's right on.
You could start here. Read BOTH 1 and 2.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar98/articles/soundproofing.html
fitZ
 
Thanks C7, Rick, the two of you just saved me some typing... :=))
 
I think my terminology is wrong ... a floating room is what I had in mind, but Rick's comments confirm a worry I have about building on top of joists - that the floating room would potentially be too heavy and no very effective at isloating.

I don't think the points c7sus raised are an issue though - non standard stud/joist spacing should be a non issue and all of these places have updated electrical wiring with 200 amp/240 volt service.

I couldn't find the link to part 1 of the sound on sound article, but part 2 is stuff I'm familiar with ... I've done some reading but it's all been geared towards building a stand alone studio or garage retrofit.

so what about an older townhouse with a usable basement (ceilings around 8 feet, solid concrete floor)?
 
The solid concrete floor's a good start, but in order to do a good job of isolating ALL audio frequencies from neighbors, a heavy floated slab with substantial air gap (Damped with insulation) would be necessary; to take care of frequencies low enough to isolate drums, the floated room would need at least a 3-1/2" concrete slab over 3/4 OSB over 2x6 PT joists resting on 1" EPDM rubber pucks; the weight of the slab + ply + joists will need to be calculated to find the cross-sectional area of EPDM pucks and their spacing along the joists; then, the weight of each wall (and the additional shared weight of that portion of the supported inner ceiling) would need to be calculated and ADDITIONAL pucks placed between the normally spaced ones all around the perimeter joists-

All this AFTER you do an experiment with the rubber you actually GET, testing to see how much weight it takes with a given cross sectional contact to compress the rubber by 10% of its uncompressed thickness. If you don't put at LEAST this much weight on the rubber, it won't act reliably as a spring, so no isolation.

If you go more than that, you start to decrease the life expectancy of the rubber. Under ideal conditions of 10% compression, normal neoprene will be lucky to last 10 years; EPDM about 25 years.

Bottom line is, to do this properly you'd need at LEAST 18" more headroom than you want to end up with; nearly a foot for the floated slab, and at least 6-1/2" or more for the ceiling depending on span and joist spacing.

How tall did you say you were??!? Steve
 
haha, fortunately pretty short (5' 7). I wasn't aware the neopreme had such a short life span ... can it be replaced by jacking up a floating floor? Also I'm guessing the floating concrete slab could be replaced with a floating wood floor in a basement of a detached house with say 40' isolation from neighbors house?

btw G7 - I wasn't trying to sound dismissive of your points, I have considered these points (except for the insulation performance difference you bring up) but the other things I can work with.

It sounds like I need to focus on finding a small detached house, hopefully I can find something in the right price range.
 
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