Walls and more walls (internal & external)

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:03 am

Have recently built a garage out back.
Was going to build a room within a room in the back half.
At this point, on a basic level I will be erecting a staggered stud wall system, with seperate base etc plates. Now in producing these walls, I figure its most logical to make them up on the groud and lift them into place, my only concern is HOW? two layers of gyprock and some deadsheeting inbetween is a lot of weight. How do you guys and girls do it? Im talking about a wall size of, 3 metres height (on the high side of an angles ceiling) and around 2.5 metres on the low side. Around 4.5 metres in width.

Another concern of mine is, the 'leaf' system of studio construction.
Since my garage is newly built, it currently has a layer of fibro on the outer frame. Should I be putting some gyprock on the inside of the main garage frame? Would this hamper progress with sound isolation in studio walls? Should I leave the inner side of said walls exposed, only filled with regular insulation, as they currently are. I just can't figure out how the 'leaf' system works in relation to not only studio walls BUT the garage walls included.

Any thoughts on my situation is much appreicated. If I have missed any crucial info you need to know to properly inform me of directions to proceed with, let me know, and I apologise in advance.

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 5:12 am

PLEASE follow this link to Rod's READ THIS BEFORE YOU POST... or read it below...

Either way, you will not receive much help without at least some of Rod's minimum required information being a part of your post.

Rod Gervais wrote:

Finally I have to put up one of these.

Before you post please make certain you do the following:

IF YOU FAIL TO DO THIS STEVE AND I WILL NOT RESPOND

Use the search feature to look for threads that may contain the answer to your question. There is a wide variety of projects represented in this forum -- everything from relatively low-budget residential rehearsal rooms to full-scale, professional recording studios. If your searches return too many results, try multiple terms with "Search for all terms" enabled.

If those efforts do not lead you to the answers you need, you are welcome to post your questions on the forum. If you do so:

Edit your profile to include your location. This is very important, because this is a worldwide resource, and as such, material costs and availability vary widely. For example, masonry is cheaper than gypsum in some parts of the globe, whereas it's the exact opposite in other regions. We're not asking for your address or credit card number, just a country will do.

Start your post with an overview of your goals and where you are in the process... Research? Planning? Construction already underway? Finished, and wanna know why it doesn't work?

HOW LOUD are you, and how picky/loud are your neighbors? How close? This is subjective, so you will need to buy something like the Radio Shack Sound Level Meter

Trust me, if you're recording/mixing music you should be using this ALWAYS, so it's not a waste of money. For music at typical mix levels, you want to use "C" weighting, slow. The human ear has no way of "measuring" ABSOLUTE sound levels; it just adapts to what's there, and calls that "normal" - so if you keep raising the volume, pretty soon you're mixing at 110 dB, ruining your hearing and neighbor "atta-boy" points, etc - the SPL meter helps you keep levels constant and safe.

For all other tests, the authorities virtually ALWAYS use A weighting, and (I think) slow response. So for compliance, use "A" weighting measurements.

Include as much detail as possible about the existing construction. Having details about anatomy of your existing floor, walls, and ceiling is critical. In your searches of the forum, you'll likely find examples of the kinds of details that are needed, and you'll see that the quality and timeliness of the advice given are affected by the level of detail provided.

Please don't tell us you want to float your floor if you are building on an upper level - this is almost always impractical, and ALWAYS will require a LOCAL ENGINEER to verify that it will be safe.

Remember that acoustics is THREE DIMENSIONAL, not two - when you give dimensions, we need Length, Width, Height, plus any NON-parallel features of the room.

Include drawings of what you're describing if at all possible. They do not need to be professional or perfectly to scale, but they do need to account for the necessary details. Cropping your drawing will allow you to make the important parts larger and more legible without increasing the overall size. See next...

Please resize as necessary to keep graphics BETWEEN 700 and 750 pixels wide - otherwise it's either too small for details or it forces people to scroll sideways to read every line of text.

If you link to pix OFF this site, please make sure THOSE pix aren't oversized either - it causes the SAME PROBLEM.

_________________
Rod Gervais
Acoustics Moderator Sometimes - late at night..... when the wind whips
through the trees........ and the moon shines bright in my
face......... I think deep thoughts.......... and my head hurts.

Rod Gervais' book "Build it Like the Pro's" is an excellent source of information.

You can also try the search funtion of the forum for what you are looking for.

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:08 am

I guess you could say i'm in the research/planning stage.
Best two books i've come across so far is Mr Gervais' and another called Recording Studio Design by Philip Newell.

Loudeness, will be a couple of electric guitars at a peak. I'm not metal head, and a fair amount of quieter acoustic instrumentation work will be undertaken. Neighbours are roughly 20 feet away. Mostly solo work will be undertaken. Both recording and mixing will be done here.

As previously said, I have recently built a garage. The back end will be tailored to be a room within a room scenario. It's a concrete floor, and wooden structual frames at the moment. On the outside of the frame is fibro board. Between studs are a-typical insulation batts. The roof is corrugated iron supported by exposed beams at this point. Batts are up there as well.

So, with this info in mind...

I will approach the studio walls with the staggered stud model. Seperate top and bottom plates. On page 55 of Rod's book is a diagram of such a wall, with an STC rating of 63. That's the basic wall construction i'm heading towards. With this in mind...it's impossible for me to make the outer studio wall (apply gyprock etc once frame is up)as there is no space at the back of this slab/garage...so making up the walls will be done on the ground. My question is, how do I get the damned thing up? It's going to weigh quite a bit, is the solution - get 10 strong men to heave it up into place? How do you do it? Or would do it?

Should I consider making two sections to one wall, and just caulk up the connections, just like one does where two walls meet in a corner?

Roughly, the wall will measure, 3 metres in height (2.5m on the low side of an angles roof) and 4.5m wide.

I'll be adding a layer of deadsheeting between each 2 layers of gyprock. Again, this will surely add some weight as well.

Also, most construction i'm reading about usually centres on adapting an already built structure. Although I have the garage walls up...i have a question:

I gathered from the Gervais book that two leaf systems are good. I can understand this much. It seems 3/4 leaf systems are to be avoided. So can I layer the inside of my garages structual frame with whatever material I like? Should I leave this part of my garage frame exposed as it currently is? If I do add gyprock...doesn't it make a 4 leaf system? I'm just new to this area of knowledge and I can't go foward on assumptions, would love some master/student to come along and tell me how it is!

Any guidence is welcomed.

Take care,
Adrian.

Thanks Max for the push Wink

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 12:32 pm

Start by following MadMax's directions in his very politely worded post

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:25 pm

age wrote:

Another concern of mine is, the 'leaf' system of studio construction.
Since my garage is newly built, it currently has a layer of fibro on the outer frame. Should I be putting some gyprock on the inside of the main garage frame? Would this hamper progress with sound isolation in studio walls? Should I leave the inner side of said walls exposed, only filled with regular insulation, as they currently are. I just can't figure out how the 'leaf' system works in relation to not only studio walls BUT the garage walls included.

Any thoughts on my situation is much appreicated. If I have missed any crucial info you need to know to properly inform me of directions to proceed with, let me know, and I apologise in advance.

You seem to be missing all the crucial information. If you have an existing structure with walls then you will build a walled room with in that.

A typical household wall is a two leaf system. wallboard(mass)/insulation,frame(air)/wallboard(mass)= mass/air/mass.

It reads that you need a walled containment area within your already existing building.

Read, read, read!!!

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