Floor Construction

So the time has come to stop designing and start building! First off, the floor. It's going to be a standard stud type floor, with the timber battens lined with some resilient floor tape. The floor will be 40mm away from the main wall. At the corners of the structure will be extended battens that will ensure the structure does not move when complete. The battens will be separated by 400mm and then 22mm floorboards will be laid on the top. Rockwool RWA45 will be laid in between the battens. I've opted for the 100mm option for maximum sound absorption. I'm in the process of ordering 20 packs of Rockwool from CCF. Best price I have found and free delivery over £200. I'm also getting the floor tape from Custom Audio Designs. They're really good at giving advice, and their website has loads of very useful information. Gonna get some acoustic sealant from them too, stuff that is similar to Green Glue.

So here's how the floor should be looking when done :

Hopefully the next post will be the build :)

To Genie Clip or not Genie Clip...

Genie Clips
More Genie Clips

So I started putting together a sketchup to map out the construction of the walls, more specifically to see how many genie clips and "furring bars" will be needed for my studio build. And I came up with this :
 

 
Yellow bars are wood between the two plasterboard layers, the red lines are furring bars, and the red circles will be the genie clips. So, in total :
 
Genieclips

• Side walls 2 x 18
• End Walls 2 x 16

Genieclip furring bars

• Side Walls 2 x 8 (1850mm)
• End Walls 2 x 4 (1850 mm)
• End Walls 2 x 4 (1200mm)

That's gonna cost a bit! Well, £371 in total. And that's a massive amount of my budget. In fact, nearly all of it. And I still have to have money for the acoustic plasterboard, rockwool, and a new desk.

And then I stumbled over this great post on gearslutz : https://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/466758-genie-clips-double-wall-stud-construction-no-longer-needed-anyone-tried-them.html

Specifically :

"there is no advantage to using the clips when building a "room within a room" - in fact it is a complete waste of money - and will most probably lower the TL vale of the wall in the lower frequency range.

One thing it will NOT do is give you any real bonus at any frequency.....

Look at it in this respect - you are trying to get a boost by decoupling something that is already decoupled.

The advantage to these clip systems is when you are forced into a single wall build - at which time they will decouple one wall face from the frame....."

So as I'm building a room within a room, I'm trying to decouple something that's already decoupled. Genieclips are not for me. Thank feck for that :)

Sketchup Feckup...

So having looked in a few forums, Sketchup seems to be an awesome tool for designing buildings/rooms/studios etc etc. So here's a bash at my new studio, this is what I think it should look like. Next stage will be posting this up on a couple of cracking forums and seeing what those with more experience say. Also starting to think about the flooring. Currently thinking about a felt strip around the room, a layer of Lamella boards, and then a layer of chipboard on top. And then some kind of carpet to keep my toes warm in winter.

But here's the Sketchup. This is my first go so please be gentle with any comments :)

Let's start at the very beginning...

So... I have a log cabin in my garden, and this is going to be my new studio. The walls are far from sound proofed so I'm going to be doing a lot of work to bring this building up to scratch. I really want a place I can turn the volume up and not worry about the neighbours! Here are some of my initial thoughts :

• The current lighting reminds me of a school canteen. They gotta go, replaced with spotlights...
• I'm gonna build a room within the log cabin. There's enough space for this so should be all good. For the walls, it's gonna be a sheet of MDF, a layer of rockwool, then another sheet of MDF put together with genie clips.
• One of the fundamental principles of this build will be to not have any parallel walls. Should help with the acoustics once the soundproofing is complete.
• Any gaps (joins between wood etc) in the structure will be filled with some green glue.
• Joins in MDF sheets will not be the same in each layer. This will reduce leakage. Slightly...
• There is already an alarm system installed. The sensors can be re-homed inside the new room.
• It also has air con, which will also have to be moved. This should help with the air circulation.

Here are some links :

Excellent forum on studio building
Genie Clips (with a good example of the wall I'm trying to create)
Green Glue
Long article from Sound On Sound
Rockwool

And here are some pictures :

I'll keep updating this blog as the build progresses... :)