Floor treatment

[mcmd]

I am adding a second floor to my ranch and have tucked away a room for a studio. It's a real compromise between additional living space and the studio. The new studio is beside the new family room, and so I am putting in french doors into the studio. This will extend the living space when the studio is not in use. - OK so its not a real studio, but its the best I can do ....

The framing and wiring is all done. I am ( the contractor) adding double sheet rock to the studio walls, but I'm not sure what to do with the floors. The plan, up to now, was to run hardwood flooring in both rooms, but the sub-flooring seems to carry every footstep and sound. I know that once the sheet rock and plastering are done, the 'noise' should improve. Is there anything else I should consider doing to the flooring, (besides floating floors), you know something simple but practical....

Thanks,

Dara

 

[CoolCat]

Floors

I've been wondering the same on the floor.
I'm working on an upstairs "musician-workstation" type room.

I took over a small closet that will be like a isolation guitar amp, VBooth thing.

Anyway, I noticed a heavy bass rumble, from strumming my acoustic guitar!! the acoustic guitar rumbled the floor kinda!

daaang this "room acoustic" stuff is tricky indeeed.

If you haven't look yet there's alot of pictures...may get an idea that'd work for you. hard floors with rugs i've seen in some of the bigger studios.

 

[knightfly]

Are those French Doors just a single set, or are you doing two sets with an air space between them? If single, that will limit your isolation considerably.

Are your floor joists running from the studio into the rest of the space, or are they perpendicular to the path you'd walk when going from the studio into the other room?

You appear to have two LARGE problems with achieving much isolation here - the common floor will "flank" from room to room, unless you isolate some way - either by floating the floor (there are relatively simple ways that help, although not as much as a true floated floor) - if your joists run so that the two rooms do NOT share a joists, then the flanking will only travel thru the joists to the perimeter joists and back into the next room thru its separate joists. If this is your case, you might be able to add a second joist at the dividing point, and put a resilient "break" between sections of floor so that each room's floor stops at this resilient break.

With the doors, the only way to achieve significant isolation is with two doors and an absorbed air lock between them. The wider the air gap, the better the isolation. The heavier the glass, the better. The doors MUST seal all around, or you're wasting your time. Some people have had success with some types of doors using automotive round type door seals, but I doubt french doors would be a good application for that.

The wallboard for the two rooms should also have a resilient material between rooms; ANY hard contact between rooms will result in flanking noise. Once sound gets into your framing, it will travel the framing and re-radiate thru the panels in the next room, so it's important to think this out and break ALL possible hard contact between rooms.

When this isn't possible, the only way to get there is a full floated room. There are night clubs that have used this approach and you don't even know they are in the building til you enter the club, and your ears trade places from the sound level... Steve