the doors

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rats

rats

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Trying to determine a good easy fix for my door problem.

I've spent all of this time and money getting the rehearsal studio as soundtight as I can, and I don't want to end up with sound leaking through the door. I've got three hollow core doors in my garage of different shapes and forms, but my guess is that they wont be very sound tight. I'm completely broke, too. I do have some plywood that I've considered screwing in to one of the doors as an extra layer.

Does anyone have a good idea on how to make these hollow core doors soundtight?
 
hi Rats ...
Do you have any seals on these doors .. weatherstripping or anything like that? That will help ... and is cheap. By hollow ... I assume you mean those doors that basically just have an 1/8" skin of fiber board or something attached to the outside with literally nothing but air in between.
I used steel foam-core doors, which actually do pretty well for what I'm doing. It's an all-in-one type unit completely weather-sealed, that's why I went that way ... ok and they were pretty cheap. I intend (still) to add a 1/2" plywood layer to one side and add another seal to further stop sound from coming through ... at least on the studio room door. Auralex Sheet-Block (or other vinyl sound blocking product) has also crossed my mind, but seems pretty expensive ... but then again easy to install and I guess looks pretty nice.
I asked this same type of question about a year ago (yeah yeah ... I still haven't done anything yet) ... and got some really good feedback, which is where these ideas came from. Maybe you can find it if you search. There was a good diagram of the double-seal concept too ... maybe that link is still active.
Good luck!
 
The studio is in my basement, and I don't have a permanent door up yet. The doors I have to choose from are yes, those 1/8 inch skin hollow panel doors. A few of them have the moulded panels and the other two are the flat face kind. The guy who used to live in my house made a terrible attempt at soundproofing a room in the basement, but one of the things he did was gluing that rigid blue foam (1 1/2" thick) stuff to one side of the door. Will that do anything?

What about the plywood idea?

What kind of weatherstrip would you reccomend to seal it with?
 
I don't think the foam would do anything that you'd notice ... especially if there no seal on the door to begin with.
The weatherstripping I'm talking about is just the normal rubber strips that compress as the door is closed on it ... making an airtight seal. Also, look into getting a rubber sweep to attach to the bottom of the door to seal that gap ... or build up the threshold so it meets the door and put some weatherstrip on that too .. the idea is to get an airtight seal all the way around the door. This is where I found an exterior steel door to be a good cheap solution because there's already a threshold and it was already weatherstripped.

I'm unsure if the plywood/double seal idea would work with a hollow door like that ... my thought is that it would be too heavy for the light-weight door to handle it. But maybe if you get an extra hinge on the door it might hold it ... don't quote me though.
The plywood serves two purposes ... 1) to add more mass to the door to help reduce sound that transfers through and (more importantly, imo) 2) to allow you to build a second "frame" on top of the existing one that also has rubber weatherstrip that will act as another seal for the door. If I can find the cool graphic that kristian drew last time, I'll post it. That's what made the lightbulb go off for me, at least.
Anyway, I think I explained this right ... but maybe John, Sjoko, kristian or anyone else who knows what I mean can say it better. :)

Good Luck
 
Damn rats, seems you've got a little problem there.

There are a number of ways in which to improve a [normal] door. The easiest ones are:
1) Making sure you have seals all round.
2) Adding mass.
3) Use 2 doors.

The problem with those hollow core doors is - everything. If you glue / screw anything heavy on them, they disintegrate.
So, you have to keep it as light as possible, but take into consideration that you can improve them, but you can never make them into good sound barrier doors.

One solution is: pull one door closed, fit strips of 2 x 1 on the door just inside the frame. Make sure you leave space for the door to open on the hinge side.
Get some 1" thick pressed glasswool panels (Home Depot, or look in the yellow pages for a local insulation company). Glue these panels inside the frame, and fit one layer of 1/4" ply over the strips. Now you have a much thicker door. With the door closed, fit more 2 x 1 strips on the door frame, so that there is a 1/4" gap between the new layer and the strips. Get some 1" wide draughtproof strip and glue it on the new strips, so you'll have to pull the door into them to close it.

Another one - use 2 of the doors, openings opposing each other, gap between them as big as you can make it.

Hope that helps. Unfortunately, whatever you do, it costs a little money. I think the easiest and cheapest solution is to get some Stanley Sta Tru doors, 89 bucks from home depot. pretty strong steel skinned door with a good all-round seal, you can fit all sorts of stuff to them without them falling apart.
 
What sjoko2 said.......shit I wish I could reference my local hardware store.....mmmmh........you probably don't even call it a hardware store.........:D

cheers
John
 
Huh? John??
Pfffffffffffffffff - you should have seen me when I started building this place. Don't forget, I'd never actually build anything in the US before, only in the UK.
I made a huge list of supplies I needed and went to the local timber yard, which is called a lumber yard. It never dawned on me that EVERYTHING had a different name over here.
I started reading out my list......... the guy said "gimme that", and looked at me like I was from another planet.
On top of everything else, SIZES of everything here is different. In the UK if you want a 2 x 4, you get a piece of wood which is 2 x 4. In the US you'll get a piece of wood which was 2 x 4 before someone knocked it into shape.................
Took me ages to learn, thank god there is this Irish guy working at the lumber yard, he knew what I ment.
 
uh thanks.

Me thinks I will print that off and go down to Home Depot to have that nice man Harold decipher it for me. Sounds good.
 
If I didn't make sence, let me know!
Sometimes I do know what I mean but nobody else does :)
 
Yeah - over here a 2 x 4 is a 100mm x 50mm....well not really, after they've stripped it it becomes a 95 x 45mm!! I do believe that metric is a better system though.

cheers
John
 
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