How much is too much?

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BSOD

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Hi all. I am renting a space for my studio and was looking at possibly putting up a booth for isolation. The space is 14'x22' with 8'+ celing. Is also has a 7'x6' closet on one of the 14' wall ends. Although I am renting I though I wouldn't mind sound proofing that closet if the cost were reasonable. It's in the basement of a commercial building with concrete walls and floor. The celing is also concrete. I asked someone for a rough estimate and the guy told me $5,000 minimum. That seems excessive, no? For that kind of money I could buy a booth that I can take with me when I leave. I need some advice. Can I treat that room for a reasonable price or should I buy a vocal booth from Whisper Room?

-bsod
 
$5000 dollars?
Hell, I'll do it for half that! :D

If you're having a contractor build it for you, figure about $70 dollars per square foot for a finished product (Since you already have walls, floor and ceiling), and around $35 dollars per square foot if you're going to build it yourself.
 
Hell, I'll do it for half that!
Click to expand...

In all your spare time, huh Michael :p

Seriously though BSOD. What tells you that you actually NEED soundproofing? A few questions.
First, is ALL the space a complete concrete enclosure? Do you have a control room in there now? Is the soundproofing just to keep sound from transmitting from the control room to the booth and vice versa, or do you hear environmental sounds trasmitting from outside of the space? If so, what sort of sound? What is adjacent to the building and above your space?
Before someone can SERIOUSLY design the construction they must know what they are dealing with. For instance, if there is an adjacent RAILROAD, nothing but a massive floating room will help if you record during times of train movement, as concrete is a direct link to the tracks. On the otherhand, if you have very little or no environmental noise, and only want isolation between the control room and vocal booth, and there is a CONCRETE wall seperating the two already, then other methods may be viable. Is there a door in this wall, or just an opening?
Information is the key here. The more you provide, the better people can help with a solution. It could even be, that a correct door to the iso room, and treatment will do the trick. It also may turn out that your bid source knows something that we do NOT. :confused: :eek: Like this is in a train terminal. :rolleyes: :D In that case, he may seriously be underestimating his bid. No matter what, everything depends on information, unless you have money to burn.

Also, consider this. SOUNDPROOF is AIRPROOF. IF you have to bring ventilation or HVAC THROUGH concrete walls or ceilings, AND-OR you have to place an HVAC unit outside of the space, then I would guess your friends bid is misaligned with reality.

fitZ :)
 
Thanks for the reply. Here's what I am dealing with. The main room is 14' deep by 22' wide. This serves as the control room, music production, and screening room. The closet is an old vault which measures 7' deep by 6' wide and has a big 2.5" metal safe door. As long as I keep the monitors at a reasonable level I think the control room noise can be kept out by treating the door. Although there are no vents in the vault a hiss from the main rooms air vents can be heard. Noise from upstairs is not a big problem as the room directly above is carpeted and normal walking cannot be heard in the vault. I guess the biggest challenge is the building next door. It shares the common wall with the vault and the long wall of the main room. It is a nightclub and the speakers and band are located on the first floor about 20' away from where the vault starts. Only the low frequencies leak through a bit. When I record sax and even flute the noise is not enough to make it onto the track. Voice is not so good. If the person is singing it's not bad, but voiceover work when the person is whispering whould probably be a problem. Since the club doesn't start kickin' until after 10:00pm I've decided all my quiet work should happen before that. So all that's left is the vault door. It would be nice to have a window in it, but it is made of metal. And I also am not sure what to do about ventilation. The main thing I'm trying to determine is if it's cost effective to do something with this room or buy a pre-made booth.

Will I have the same problems with a booth?
Is it possible to treat that room with stuff I can use elsewhere if I move?
Are those booths worth the money?

-bsod
 
Hello again. Ok, thanks for the info. Still need some more.

Do you have a lease on this space, and if so, for how long?

Is the metal door removable?

What are the ceilings made of and if there is a dropped false finish ceiling, can you see into this space between the finish cieling and the bottom of the floor above?

What type of HVAC exists? I assume from the "hiss" noise, there are existing registers/ducts. Where are these in relationship to the vault? Is there a supply and return register/grill? Are the ducts in the void between a finish ceiling and the floor above? Does the HVAC supply the space above too? Or any other space? Are any of the ducts supplying or returning air to your space as well as others, or are there seperate ducts for each space?

I assume the wall seperating the vault from the control room is concrete, no?
How thick is this wall, and how far from the duct work is it?

Given the fact that your main room is only 14' x 22', this vault represents valuable square footage :D and I would use it if ventilation can be installed. Either via a seperate fan unit installed somewhere else, or tieing into the existing ducts, with serpintine ductwork. Especially given the fact this is already concrete, I believe you can cheaply build a floating booth within this space, IF you can remove the existing metal door. Does this landlord want you to keep this assembly INTACT? Perhaps, you can remove the whole
assembly, although it may not be easy, but I've done worse. I use to have a shop in an old dairy with 14" thick concrete walls that I cut a doorway into. Took 2 days. Once framed in, the doors looked great. Maybe you could remove the whole jamb and widen the door?

To my way of thinking, FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS is a LOT of money. :eek:
If it were me, I would make this work no matter what. Treatment is worthless if you can't breath, or if you have to open the door constantly to let fresh air in, as even a small incandescent bulb will raise the temperature fairly quickly. Treatment is still insulation, so a small space will hold this heat in. Even one person breathing, can quickly deplete the freshness of the existing air. Like I said, once you soundproof, you airproof. So checkout EVERYTHING you can regarding the existing HVAC. Is this room COMPLETELY below ground, or is it partially above ground, and are any walls exterior? I'm looking for avenues to vent or alternatives. Thats what you have to do, is look at ALL the alternatives, which translate into knowing what is there. The first thing you have to solve is ventilation, so let us know and we will try to go from there.

fitZ :)
 
Thanks for the detailed response Rick. I'll try to answer as completely as I can.

1. The "lease" is pretty informal. The building is owned by a friend of mine. I've been here about two years and recently moved to a larger space. The building is owned by a film production company and I do music and audio for them.

2. The metal door is set on two hinges which would probably come off. The door itself is 34" wide by 79" tall.

3. The celing is made of concrete blocks and there are small gaps between each row of blocks. I can't tell for sure but it looks like the bottom of the upstairs floor may be visible through the gaps.

4. The HVAC is located across the hall in the machine room and has metal ducts which carry air into the main room. The duct runs almost the entire length of the 22' wall starting above the door. The duct has two vents and sits about 8' away from them safe. I think the intake is out in the hallway. As far as I can see there is no void in the celing, the ducts are suspended from metal "legs" attached directly to the concrete in the celing. The HVAC supply cold air only to the basement which is about 4 rooms. The other rooms are mostly storage and nobody works in them for the most part. The duct from my room joins up in the outside hallway with the duct to the other room.

5. The wall the safe door is connected to is concrete at about 8" thick and 8' away from the duct.

6. The landlord does not mind any construction I do in the space. The door space is 34" across, is that wide enough?

7. The top of the room is about 5' off the ground and has only one wall facing the outside. The wall opposite the safe.

As far as ventilation goes do you think it would be alot of work to tap into the existing duct? Probably 12 feet of ductwork (or more with diffusion baffles) would get it over to the vault. We coult then cut a vent into the space above the door. That wouldn't be too expensive, would it?

-bsod
 
Ok, now we are getting somewhere. Alright, I have to leave town for the day, but tonight I'll layout some things in CAD and post them tomorrow, ok?
I'm a detailer, so I tend to focus on ...what else?....DETAILS :D And for this, that is EXACTLY what we will do. Now, while I'm gone, try to find out as much as you can about the ductwork. Look where I told you, find out about the unit itself, and IF you can draw and post a PLAN view of where the ducts, doors, etc are. Try and draw a plan SECTION of the existing vault door JAMB with EXACT MEASUREMENTS. I assume the jamb is a heavy duty metal jamb, but what I need to know is if this is like a real VAULT door, or simply a metal mandoor and jamb. We have to know what we are dealing with. Well, gotta go, talk later.
fitZ
 
Hello bsod-ok I finally had time to re read your last post. A couple of things I need to clear up.

The HVAC ONLY supplys cold air. Is that correct? How come? Is it just an air conditioner? Doesn't it get cold in the winter? What do you do for heat?
If I understand you correctly, the duct work is EXPOSED, and hanging from the ceiling. Which is 8' from the floor. And this ceiling is CONCRETE BLOCK, which I can't imagine, especially if it has gaps between the blocks that you can see through to the floor above. Are you sure this is concrete? How big are these blocks? Does the vault have this same type of ceiling? Find out how thick these are? And what holds them up :D Hmmmm, that one has me baffled, but I can tell you this. I'd bet $1k thats where your sound leakage is coming from. How far up from the ceiling is the upper flooring? I would suspect you are getting sound flanking via structural transmission through the floor above, but you really need to investigate this. Without thourough investigation, I'd venture to say that sealing ALL the gaps, is the first priority. Can you post some pictures of the cieling, and door? I'd hate to waste a bunch of money and time trying to isolate this room, only to find out there are problems that inherently so difficult, that only extreme measures can solve the iso problems. Again, information is key here.

As far as the door is concerned, what IS the problem other than you wanted glass? Is it extremly heavy to open? Or has latching problems, like a combination lock/pull? Is the jamb some type of wierd scenario that would be difficult to add seals to? Sounds like it would be usable if I only knew some particulars that only pictures can tell me. That is IF, you only wanted to bring in ventilation and treat the vault.
If you want to improve the isolation in the vault, from external building or structural sound transmission, IF the ceiling is as you told me, then the gaps and other things must be sealed, as well as cutting for the vent ducts. I'll post some links for duct isolators. Any electrical in there, or lighting? That has to be delt with also, before you build a decoupled interior shell. This is where the details come in :eek: I've done some investigation on a design for decoupled interior shell, but still need this information on the jamb, electrical, to finish the connections. So as soon as I hear back from you, I'll finish these details and post them.

fitZ
 
Thanks Rick. As soon as I get back to town I'll take some pictures and post them. I've never done any construction so maybe I'm not explaining the celing properly. There are rows of blocks about 4 or 5 inches by 6 or 7 inches. The rows are parallel to the 14' walls and each row is separated by about a 1 inch gap. It's hard to see into the gap but it looks like the floor from the upstairs is on top of the rows of blocks. About halfway down the 22' wall on one side there is a post. That's about all I remember for now.

As far as the AC goes I think it only provides cold air. The heat should come from a radiator type thing on the floor furthest away from the door and vault. As far as I know it doesn't work. Like I said I just moved in a couple of weeks ago so I'm not sure if it can be fixed or not. I am looking into replacing the AC unit with something that can heat and cool. In the meantime I'll probably use space heaters when it gets cold.

The vault door. I don't think there would be a problem treating the door and door jamb, I just didn't know about putting a window in it. That would require cutting it and placing two panes of glass or plexiglass in there, right? Is that expensive and complicated? There is a light socket in there. An additional outlet would be good for putting guitar amps and stuff in there. Again if I can keep the bleed from the studio out of there and get some ventilation it would probably be fine.

The main thing is would it be cheaper and easier to by a $3,000 booth from vocalbooth.com or do it myself?

When I get back to town I'll get the other information for you.

Thanks again.
 
Don't waste your money on that..IMO you should be able to build a nice Vocal booth for $500 on your own. Some of that stuff is overkill.
 
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