DIY build - garage studio ALMOST DONE!

[Tortuga]

You do some great looking work, are you in the construction trade?

It looks like you are going to be installing your gear any day now

Thanks man - we're pretty well connected with contractors & builders in the family, and both my dad and I have done enough construction, electrical, plumbing, etc. to be fairly familiar with how things are designed and built. Plus, we've run everything by the family to be confident in what we're doing - at least building-wise.

...it's the sound mitigation that's keeping me up at night. I'm absolutely DYING to get the room buttoned up so we can run a test.

Maybe we can have the first IE Ampfest at my place, eh?

[skybluegary]

I'd love to hear your thoughts as to how much help the poly foundation was to the overall build. What other mitigation options did you put in, and were they more, as, or less important than the subfloor?

Thanks!

I really couldn't quantify the amount of help the floor gave, but it is one of the complete walls of the box in a box, and one of the contact areas regarding travelling vibrations (we put wooden flooring and carpet on top of the poly). You saw the pics from my build? I can say though, that my connected neighbour couldn't hear us (he did say they could tell when we were really going for it due to slight low freq virbration) whereas my neighbour across the road could hear a bit more than that if their windows were open, essentially the floor seemed better at killing sound than the walls.

Every DIY job is going to have compromises, it looks like you're really coming on well with it though, we'll done so far!

[Tortuga]

maybe I missed it - but is the ceiling going to be the same construction as the walls?

Unfortunately, ceiling clearance isn't allowing for that - I'm already going to be at 7-1/2 feet max height - maybe less, depending on how we do the drywall. We're going to rely on rockwool & thermal insulation + paying a lot of attention to sealing all joints as best we can. I realize I'm relying on a lot of hope for that - perhaps I can cover the whole top in Audimute sheets or something if I'm really getting a lot of sound leakage through the ceiling?

...we'll see

so you are going to put a ceiling on it though? right?
maybe you could insulate and sheetrock the bottom of the floor above first?

Oh yeah - I think I misunderstood the premise of your question. The room will definitely will have a ceiling. Just haven't gotten to that part of my story yet Hang tight - it should become obvious how I plan to do this very soon

I'd love to hear your thoughts as to how much help the poly foundation was to the overall build. What other mitigation options did you put in, and were they more, as, or less important than the subfloor?

Thanks!

I really couldn't quantify the amount of help the floor gave, but it is one of the complete walls of the box in a box, and one of the contact areas regarding travelling vibrations (we put wooden flooring and carpet on top of the poly). You saw the pics from my build? I can say though, that my connected neighbour couldn't hear us (he did say they could tell when we were really going for it due to slight low freq virbration) whereas my neighbour across the road could hear a bit more than that if their windows were open, essentially the floor seemed better at killing sound than the walls.

Every DIY job is going to have compromises, it looks like you're really coming on well with it though, we'll done so far!

Makes total sense. I wasn't sure if you were the one that posted those pictures in my other thread - thanks for that! I really think that would make a big difference, but lack of available ceiling height plus cost reasonableness versus perceived benefit (as far as what we hope ) caused us to skip that part of the box. Hopefully the density of my 60 year old concrete will be enough to handle the situation. That, and my closest neighbor's house is actually elevated about 4 or 5 feet above my house, which may also help minimize the transmission of lower frequencies to their property .

I really appreciate the input! Please feel free to chime in / point out anything I miss!

[Tortuga]

This is a bit out of order, but I went ahead and made an updated drawing with studs for the final wall where the A/C niche will go, as well as the ceiling rafter system. This should clear up whatever miscommunication I may have made about the ceiling design.



The great thing about this is that the framing system is documented fairly accurately, although there is no way to be 100% accurate, since this is wood and it's about as green (wet) as it gets... At least I'll have a good idea of where studs are in the walls if/when I'm trying to locate a new guitar hangar for that $10,500 Gil Yaron '59 Les Paul I want

After we get the framing established and documented for the A/C box, I'll soon be adding 1x2 nailers to the framing to give me some wood to run screws in, should we install a second interior layer of drywall. I'll also be documenting electrical wiring, ceiling blocking, CAT5 wiring, and anything else related to the infrastructure.

[Tortuga]

@skybluegary - do you think I might get some isolation / decoupling benefit by building platforms for amps and drums to sit on that have a simple base frame stuffed with rockwool and covered in carpet, ie: drum riser?

[Tortuga]

These shots show the ceiling joists as they were being wrapped up. Pretty close to the last bit of work this past Saturday.

Sunday was all about kids' VBS at church in the morning, then our band did a really great evening service / performance last night. Way cool way to end a pretty exhausting and productive weekend





At the end of the day (Saturday), I decided to roll in my amp to see if there was ANY difference in sound outside the garage. Wasn't expecting much, as the only two walls that had any drywall (and just on the outside) were exterior facing walls that already had drywall on them. My wife said it was still pretty noisy out in front of our thin steel garage door - gonna have to look at insulating that, I bet. Oh well, the real test comes when we get the ceiling done and the bulk of the drywall up.



Also, I was really taken aback at how bassy my amp sounded in that room, which had thermal insulation facing me in all directions (except up). The room had a fairly dead ambient quality, which is sucking the life out of the sound in there. It's really got me thinking about the finish of the room. Was planning to do exterior (cheap) carpet on the walls to deaden things, but now I'm pretty sure I'm going to paint and treat the room a bit like the recording guys do. DIY bass traps, here I come...

[Tortuga]

Some preliminary stuff with the electrical system...

We're going to run two separate circuits to the room. The A/C unit will be on one, outlets on the other. This is to help keep hum and noise on the amps to a minimum. Not sure yet which circuit we'll put lights on - we're going to run LED lights that are made to retrofit into recessed cans or can be installed into a metal junction box. We're going to surface-mount junction boxes on the inside ceiling so that we don't have to penetrate the ceiling drywall with anything but the wire. Should help somewhat with the sound mitigation. Anyhow, they'll draw extremely low current and should run cool and quiet on a dimmer switch.

I'll post some better pics of what we're doing when we start digging a bit into main subpanel in my garage. For now, here's the junction box on the inside of the garage exterior wall that we're running wire from. Nothing too exciting, but this is where we'll tie all studio power to. The grey PVC conduit carries 4 wires (two circuits, ground, and neutral) over to the studio wall.



I've also decided that I want to make sure the room has master kill switches next to the entry door, so that I don't have to worry about things running and potentially burning up in a completely soundproofed room that's outside our main living space. I'll install a couple of small indicator lights on the side of this switch panel that will indicate when power is on. The rule will be - if we're not in the studio, the lights should be off.



I may also install a 'Do Not Enter' light that I can switch on from the inside of the room, so people don't walk in on a recording session that's not loud enough to be heard outside the room. Also will be installing ethernet cabling, so I can get good bandwidth from the router in the house to the computer I'll be installing in there.

[Tortuga]

So that brings me completely up to present with this build.

I've starting putting together a list of things that are on tap for the next major work session, hopefully this weekend (I've been dealing with some serious back issues, and it's starting to kinda act up)
* installing drywall nailers throughout the interior structure, so we don't have problems anchoring down a second set of drywall sheeting
* caulking / sealing joints in the framing and along the bottom plates (my concrete floor is like an ocean of dips and waves) throughout the structure to block air (and thus acoustic) leakage
* installing remaining electrical outlet boxes in walls, drilling and roughing in electrical wire for outlets and lighting
* finish conduit wireway and wiring from master kill switches to garage subpanel
* design and frame the A/C box
* start planning out the muffler box for air distribution (in and out of room)

We'll see how things go...

[skybluegary]

@skybluegary - do you think I might get some isolation / decoupling benefit by building platforms for amps and drums to sit on that have a simple base frame stuffed with rockwool and covered in carpet, ie: drum riser?

I think there is always benefit if you can separate any piece of equipment from the floor, even with something temporary like polystyrene or rubber under cab wheels or underneath the wood frame of the riser, the less contact with the floor the better.

[Tortuga]

Makes sense - can't wait to try it out!

[Tortuga]

Build update - weekend of 7/26 & 27

With the walls and ceiling framing in place, this weekend was primarily spent getting ready for the drywall phase. Lots of detail work here, including framing in the A/C niche, roughing-in electrical wiring, and sealing up air gaps in the framing.

Framing of the sides and top is all staggered for noise mitigation. Didn't get any pics of the A/C niche in-progress, but here's a couple shots of the completed work





And this is the unit we're hoping will do the job. It's intended to be set up with an exhaust hose that goes into a window opening. Since we obviously don't have a window, we'll be building a muffler box (noise apparently travels really well right though A/C units and through ductwork) with an inline fan on the outlet that'll take the hot air and send it up to our new roof-mounted solar fan. Details are still rough at this point, but we're working on it...



Most of the electrical wiring is in place now. We're planning to surface-mount 6 LED lights on the ceiling. We also put 3 electrical receptacles on each wall that are all going to be connected to the master switch on the outside of the room. With the exception of two plugs (for computers), the room will all be shut off whenever we're not in there. One drawback of all these electrical boxes is that I'll have a hell of a lot of insulating to do to make sure they don't leak noise.







I also ran CAT5 cable in the walls for the computer, so I have better bandwidth (than wireless) to the server in my house.

Didn't get a shot of the sealant I'm using, but it's actual Acoustic Sealant that comes in massive 30 oz tubes and was surprisingly dirt-cheap, considering I got it from a specialty place that luckly was near my work. Wound up running 2 tubes of the stuff around the ceiling area and part of the flooring.

Last major operation of the weekend was to get some more of the exterior drywall up. Still have to sheet around the doorway and A/C niche, but it's getting close to being sealed up enough (once the ceiling is sheeted) to do a test run







Unfortunately, work stopped suddenly when my Dad sliced his thumb cutting the last piece of drywall we were going to do. The good part is that it wasn't deep enough to require stitches. The bad part is that he has no lymph nodes in that part of his body, due to the cancer surgery he had a few years back, and he's unable to fight even simple infections that most of us deal with on a regular basis without skipping a beat. His situation is far more serious, and has landed him in the hospital more than a few times with plummeting blood pressure and other very serious issues. He's got a full 'kit' from the doctor of antibiotics, surgical scrub, ointment, etc., and the fortunate thing (we hope) is that he actually had been taking his antibiotic medication from another injury he had from a week ago. He's seeing the doctor today, and I'm hoping that he's able to escape this one. Anyway, sorry for the tangent... prayers and mojo requested...

Seeya in a few days.

[JCDenton6]

That stinks man, hope everything is ok with your dad's thumb.
Great progress so far though!

[Tortuga]

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the support!

Can't wait to close the room off enough to see if what we're doing is going to allow us to rock out without offending everyone around us

[Marc G]

coming along nicely man... hope your Dad is ok!

[Tortuga]

Thanks! So far, so good on both accounts. Hopefully, things will keep moving that way.

[Casey4s]

Looks like you are making great progress

I sure hope your Dad is going to be OK. My Mom had some lymph nodes removed a few years ago too and I am well aware how scarey an injury like that can be. My best wishes to him.

[Diocide]

You sure have a lot of outlets on one circuit there... Just a precaution that you may want to run another breaker to it.

[ibenhad]

Man this looks awesome great job. Wish I owned I so need to build a studio. Great thread and appreciate the updates through the process.

[jamminjohn]

Looks like a great job!

I'm wondering about buzz in the amps and both circuits sharing the neutral or am I seeing this wrong...

[Tortuga]

Looks like you are making great progress

I sure hope your Dad is going to be OK. My Mom had some lymph nodes removed a few years ago too and I am well aware how scarey an injury like that can be. My best wishes to him.

Thanks to you and everyone else for the well-wishes. Fortunately, my dad rolled through that incident just fine. Looks like the meds must have done their job (maybe the prayers & mojo helped, too ).

You sure have a lot of outlets on one circuit there... Just a precaution that you may want to run another breaker to it.

Actually, we're breaking the circuit up a bit. Computer(s) will be on a dedicated set of outlets on the sides so they won't shut down using the kill switch - just the amps, instruments, and anything else plugged into the other outlets. Everything's 20 amp, so I really don't think we'll have trouble unless we start running fog machines or something silly like that. A/C is on a totally separate circuit (more on that below).

Man this looks awesome great job. Wish I owned I so need to build a studio. Great thread and appreciate the updates through the process.

Thanks - I'm really having fun with it. Glad you're enjoying the thread.

Looks like a great job!

I'm wondering about buzz in the amps and both circuits sharing the neutral or am I seeing this wrong...

Not sure if this'll be an issue or not. A/C will be sharing neutral, but that should be the only thing that'd generate any noise (lights are going to be LED for low heat & no noise). The thing is, you're going to have this situation in any household power, unless you pull in something special from the city...

[Tortuga]

Things slowed considerably after the last update - we got pretty busy with an extended vacation and other family stuff - all good, just halted progress temporarily...

This weekend, we got back to work. Next on the checklist is the ceiling. Spent some time yesterday prepping electrical in the joists and getting a shopping list together. Today, we picked up a drywall lift and the drywall we need. Here's a few pics of the progress.








After getting all the drywall up, we took the lift back & picked up the remaining rockwool and thermal insulation for the ceiling and walls.


Over the next couple of days, I'll be installing the thermal and sound insulation to get things ready for the rest of the interior drywall, which we hope to be installing over the next couple weekends. If I can at least get the rockwool in place, I might be able to get a somewhat viable test with the amp out there on Monday to see how the mitigation strategy is stacking up. Fingers crossed .

I really can't wait to get the power & A/C going. It was BLAZING hot and humid out there today. Crazy summer - hardly broke 100 in July & August (we regularly hit 100-110 during those months), but we're paying the price now.

[Tortuga]

...forgot to add - its amazing how the ceiling changed the acoustics in the space. Getting a crazy slapback echo in there right now. I can see I'm going to definitely have to do some acoustic treating to keep things workable, especially when the drywall goes up on the walls. I've been looking at quite a few DIY bass trap setups, and that'll probably be one of the first things I do when I start moving equipment into the room.

[Tortuga]

Got some more done this morning...

Finished up roughing-in the last of the electrical wiring. Caulked the drywall ceiling seams on the perimeter and where the pieces meet, to hopefully plug any potential sound leaks before I butt the wall drywall and start taping everything. I'm going to run a bead of sealant wherever walls meet at the corners, where they meet the ceiling, and at the floor. If I do it right, the hot air that the A/C unit exhausts will suck all the air from the room in short order. We'll keep it from becoming a death trap by putting in an air intake (through a muffler, similar to the exhaust) across the room.

Last bit was installing about 2/3 of the rockwool sound absorbing insulation above the ceiling. The temp got so bad, I was literally sweating a river in the attic space, and had to stop.

Anywho, here's pics of the progress

Here's what I started with (had about 2/3 of the attic floor open):


And here's where I stopped. 7 bays of itchy rockwool


This is the other side - about 4 bays to go. The OSB will form a floor and be topped with something else for extra strength & durability for storage. Once I get the thermal insulation on top of the rockwool, I'll move the OSB so I can do this side.


Going to a family party for the afternoon to go soak in the pool. Hopefully I'll get a bit more done tomorrow

[Tortuga]

Mid-weekend update...

Since my last posting, I managed to get the ceiling fully rockwool'd and covered with thermal insulation I've still got to do a bit of detail up there, then will be installing a layer of 4x8 sheets of 1/2" OSB that will be covered with another layer of 1/4" masonite hardboard sheets. This serves two purposes - completes the sound mitigation above and gives me quite a bit of storage space for camping / holiday / other stuff that we don't need access to all the time. Still anxious to see how the ceiling system will perform - that's the only area we didn't decouple inner from outer layer, whereas the walls were all decoupled using staggered studs. Hopefully all the rockwool & thermal insulation and all the extra caulking / sealing around the framing & drywall will do a good job killing quite a bit of the sound waves heading upward.

Rockwool installation into the walls was next on the list. Interesting stuff, that's for sure. Its fairly stiff (at least compared to the normal thermal stuff I'm familiar with), cuts with a serrated bread knife, and can even be carved / sculpted to work around blocks, electrical boxes, pipes, etc. Here's a a couple shots of the work in progress.





...and the (mostly) finished product

[neilrocks25]

That is just awesome. Great job and I love how the whole family is involved.

Mark me as impressed.