floating a floor...

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:37 am

hi, i want to put a wooden floated floor in my control room this spring when i renovate my space... i don't want to go super sesh and spend $4000 on my floor, i'm curious what is the easiest and cheapest way to still reap some of the benefits of a floated floor? I read a bunch over at john sayer's forum, and got some good info, but it all seemed geared towards building a super isolated 9 inch deep floor... maybe i don't even need to do it, but i'd like to... mainly just to have a wood floor in the control room instead of the tile on concrete that is in here now...

would 2x4s and sand and a playwood subfloor with parquet on top work well?

also, if i am going to be double walling parts of my space, can i leave the single walls that are there already and just build an addition 'half wall' away from that?

cheers,
john

Professor · Post by **Professor** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:30 pm

Visit the Auralex website and check out their construction products. Specifically look at the "U-Boat" rubber blocks for isolating 2x4 joists from a subfloor and also their "Seet-Blok" for floors and walls. There are lots of example photographs and a section of white papers on the site to help you formulate a plan for your floor.

-Jeremy

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:21 pm

cool... thanks alot professor... that stuff looks pretty great for what i need... i wonder if i can get the sheetblock from somewhere other than auralex (with the stupid big markup)? either way, that's a great starting point. thanks!

anyone else got any suggestions?

cheers,
john

cgarges · Post by **cgarges** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:07 am

Make absolute certain that you damp the floor you're floating. A floating floor that's not properly muted can turn the area under your floor into a giant resonating box. I've seen it happen.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:26 am

by damping you mean the space under the floor? filling it with fiberglass or what have you? or within the actual floor contruction using some sheetblock or similar to dampen the floor surface...

or both?

john

AstroDan · Post by **AstroDan** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:30 am

As far as a sheetblock alternative, farm and home supply places sell these 1" thick, 4'x6' recycled tire rubber mats. I think they're cheap, less than $50 for a sheet, but very, very heavy.

cgarges · Post by **cgarges** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:34 am

toaster3000 wrote:by damping you mean the space under the floor? filling it with fiberglass or what have you? or within the actual floor contruction using some sheetblock or similar to dampen the floor surface...

Not having actually built a studio myself, I haven't done a ton of research on floating floor construction, but I'm sure there are a few tried-and-true methods out there. Think of what a floating floor has the potential for being: A big box on which you're standing, playing, recording, listening, whatever. You basically want to reduce the audible effect of such a box. I've been in a number of rooms where this was not the case. The most problematic have been iso booths or tracking rooms where foot movement actually traveled up the stand and caused resonances in the mic. Stomping on the floor made the issue more apparent. I can only imagine what this would do to the sound of a bass cabinet sitting on it. There may be less of an issue for a larger control room floated with less height, but it's worth considering. It'd be a bad thing to take pride in building something that involved such an undertaking only to find out that there was a major oversight in the design.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

cgarges · Post by **cgarges** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:38 am

AstroDan wrote:As far as a sheetblock alternative, farm and home supply places sell these 1" thick, 4'x6' recycled tire rubber mats. I think they're cheap, less than $50 for a sheet, but very, very heavy.

Or companies that provide hull insulation for boats. On the east coast there are a few of these companies in New England and Florida.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 3:24 pm

ok... so... here's what i'm thinking.. i've been perusing the web, and i think this would be a good way to do it...

rubber thingies (i found a wholesale source for those auralex 'Uboat' things...)

2x2's (or 2x4s, but my cielings aren't super high... want to save height)

insulation between the floor and next layer, between the 2x2's...

plywood (low grade stuff.. 3/8" maybe?..)

sheetblock stuff (found a generic source for this, as well)

plywood (5/8".. either nice stuff and have this be the final layer, or cheap stuff and then parquet floor on top of that)

how does that sound to the pros here... would that be a good way to float a floor?

thoughts? problems with that approach? i like my whole floor to be no more than 4" thick...

cheers,
john

Professor · Post by **Professor** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 4:35 pm

I'm curious about a couple things.
What's the material of the original floor below your raised floor? Will you be building on a cement foundation floor or on a wood frame upper floor?
Also, have you considered what to do with the edges of the raised floor where it meets up to the walls.

And just out of curiosity, what did you find as a generic source for the sheet-blok and U-Boats and what is the pricing?

-Jeremy

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 4:40 pm

it will be on top of a tiled concrete slab. very very solid. not much resonance going on...

as for the source,

http://www.soundprooffoam.com/quiet-barrier.html

http://www.soundprooffoam.com/stud_beam_isolators.html

the prices are pretty decent. i'm going to ask my uncle who has done a ton of general contracting work over the years if he knows of any better sources, but this place seems pretty good, and i think it is much cheaper than auralex, who have always seemed rediculously over priced to me...

cheers,

john

Professor · Post by **Professor** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 5:15 pm

I've got no particular allegiance to Auralex, but I do like to support the companies that are actually making the effort to introduce the products to our industry and provide all the information on how to use their products.
And I definitely think they get a bum rap when it comes to pricing because they really aren't that bad. Honestly I would have liked to know if you found someone selling the stuff at like half the price or something.

The link you gave for the U-Boat knock-offs showed a price of $98 for 50 units.
This link to B&H Photo shows a list price of $100 for 50 units.

Comparing the pricing for the 1/8" 4x30' rolls of sheet blok, they were $311 vs. 329. And I'm sure someplace like B&H would give you a discount of at least the 2-5% to make up the difference.

Don't get me wrong here, the soundprooffoam.com folks were also selling a 1/4" thick version which Auralex doesn't, and in the end you can purchase from whoever. But the prices really aren't that far off.

-J

JohnDavisNYC · Post by **JohnDavisNYC** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 5:19 pm

interesting... like i said, i didn't do tons of research, but obviously they aren't introducing new products, merely repackaging them... i bet money that stuff all comes from the same factory, so if i can go even lower and get wholesale, i will... i dunno... auralex just seems really suspect to me... selling cheap foam as pro studio acoustic treatment is kinda jive... but eitherway, ithe stuff isn't too too expensive, which is good.

john

Professor · Post by **Professor** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 6:13 pm

Yeah, for the construction products I'm pretty sure they are OEM'ed from somewhere else, and I was kinda hoping that might have been what you found. Though I imagine purchasing direct from that kind of manufacturer would have to be in larger quanitites than just one or two rolls, and may be something more like one or two pallets. Hard to say.

As for foam, it's my understanding that they really do make that themselves. But they also only sell one kind of foam which is the fire retardant stuff. When I used to sell pro gear (I think we did RPG maybe? )I used to have to fight the uphill battle trying to convince people to purchase the more expensive foam which was fire-rated. I think after the night club thing in Rhode Island that probably got a little easier, but I'm sure it's right back to normal by now. The prices always seemed comparable to anything other cut foam products, and the patterns and color options seemed more visually pleasing than most of the other cheaper stuff.

-Jeremy

blunderfonics · Post by **blunderfonics** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:55 pm

I would not reccomend rushing into floating a floor without doing a lot of research. It is incredibly important to construct a floating floor correctly otherwise it is just wasted money and you could end up making things worse as cgarges already pointed out.

You need to know how much the finished floor and everything that will be sitting on the floor will weigh before construction so that you can use the appropriate durometer (springiness) and amount of U-Boats, neoprene or whatever you plan on springing the floor with. Whatever you use to spring the floor has optimal weight per unit area of surface contact that must be taken into acount in order for the system to work. If you exeed the amount of weight the floor will bottom out and you might as well have not used the rubber at all and built the floor right on the slab. If you use too hard a rubber or have too much surface area of contact, the rubber won't be compressed at all and the floor will again act as if it was built on the slab.

Considering that you are already on a slab I would guess that you would have worse problems with low frequencies penetrating the walls than you have with them flanking through the concrete. Since the walls are likely to be your weakest link you might do better sinking some extra money into them.

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