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Soundproofing a garage cheaply and nonpermantly


Ori0n

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We've talked it over, and are deciding to do a room within a room and lift our amps / drums off the floor, via casters and a drum riser.

 

We plan to insulate the main walls of the garage, and then insulate our built room with drywall on the inside and out. And then hang some stuff up to kill reverb and tighten up the sound.

 

Since we are renting, we want to be able to take this room with us, that will take some planning. Is this possible in anyone's opinion?

 

Will the walls be heavy enough to not have to secure them to the ceiling / floor? and if not could it be attached to the roof / wall and easily removed.

 

Is that Roxul insulation very expensive? I'm looking into it right now, but wanted your take on it.

 

our room will probably be about 10' x 18'.

 

GreenasJade, your setup looks awesome!. Was certainly a good reference point.

 

we will be trying to tweak the volume, and I will be cutting my bass down.

 

Luckily the house is right on one of the busiest streets in town, so a bit of noise is expected, and alerting our neighbors with a cutoff time of 9:00pm will be a good idea.

 

Thanks for all your input!

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Where I am, Roxul is about the same price as pink batt insulation, but it's a wool made from steel slag so the fibers are not aligned so the sound can't get through.... it's very fire proof too.

 

I insulated my 8KW diesel gen set in our Prevost Bus and you can bearly hear it running, sanding right over top of it in the front solon.

 

I would think twice about using drywall, it's very reflective. Maybe look at something like "QuietRock" soundproofing drywall.

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OriOn, I reckon with planning and good handiman skills, you can design it for taking with you to the next place, and it will be a real asset. I love my shed :)

 

You will definitely be well advised to use high density insulation, both the drywall (we call it plasterboard) and the insulation.

 

The insulation ("Roxul") fibreglass batts are the same thing you make the room treatment with (I guess you've seen the pictures of mine). They will be a must - it's amazing how much the empty insulated room rings! I swear, a clap in my empty untreated garage is still ringing after 5 seconds!

 

Another surprising thing to add is "mass in the corners" ("bass traps"). This helps both with damping the room, but also reducing the overall level of bass buildup. I have lots of leftover "roxul" in large boxes in the corners, behind the treatment bats you can see.

 

As I said, our 27'x18' shed cost about $Au3000 for insulation materials and misc. This is just short of $US2000. I don't know if you call that "expensive" or not.

 

On the topic of reflective "drywall" ... it's either reflective or it's letting it through. Since sound-proofing is the goal, you might as well have reflective (keep the sound in) and be ready damp it with room treatment. But you're right, you need drywall designed for soundproofing. Not so much to reduce reflections, but just to get the mass that is needed to block bass. (You will be _amazed_ how heavy those sheets of soundproofing drywall are!. 3 ppl needed to pick them up safely, without them breaking under their own weight!)!

 

Actyally, this reminds me: this will be the tricky thing about making the

room able to be removed and taken elsewhere. The easy thing to do is put up a frame, then whack the drywall on after the frame is up. But you can't disassemble drywall attached like that: there's no such thing as taking drywall off something once it's attached. So you are going to need to make the frame so that you can attach the drywall to removable frame sections, and then assemble those to make the room.

 

GaJ

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We are planning to use regular gypsum board for the drywall found here at our local lowes. Sandwiched with green glue; so it'd be

dw gg dw insulated wall dw gg dw and a good 6" between the existing wall and the new wall. I feel that it is a good plan for our budget.

And add sound treatment to the room after that.

 

We were unable to find sound dampening drywall or roxul insulation for our project, so we are gonna go with R13 insulation.

 

I know it's not ideal, but it will be a great experience for our next soundproofing project, for when I or one of us will hopefully own and not have to worry about rental damages and such.

 

Thanks for all your help!

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Luckily the floor is a good ole concrete driveway, so that should block any sound. We're gonna implement some bass traps, and cut my bass freq some during practice, an easy solution there should help with everything. and luckily our neighbors aren't horribly close.

 

Will let you all know!

thanks again

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Oh - another obvious one: stuff the kick drum solid :) IF the drummer will let you do this, about 70% of your problems are solved in one swoop.

 

The only two things that will be a hassle are the kick and the bass. If the bass player will turn down/EQ out the lows, and the drummer will "turn down" his kick, by _really_ stuffing it, you'll be home free.

 

The only problems I've had is that these two "IFs" sound easy and yet....

 

GaJ

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  • 3 months later...
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I've meant to reply to this thread for a while to give an update.

 

We built a 10x15 room inside our garage.

We had the room framed on a Friday

Insulated and first layer of drywall on saturday

Sunday we did the greenglue and 2nd layer of drywall.

 

We didn't have room to do any dyrwall on the outiside of the room, so we only have the double layer on the inside.

 

We cut the volume DRASTICALLY, standing outside the driveway we compete with traffic.

Our neighbors have never complained in 3 months since building it.

And as a stroke of luck we now have no neighbors on either side.

People inside our house during practice can't hear anything So i think we did a good job.

 

Thanks for all the help you guys gave!!

 

I think we'll be able to take this with us, just have to sacrifice the drywall and get more greenglue.

 

Will post pics at some point!

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I forgot to mention we used ample amounts of green glue between each sheet. It came recommended here as well alot of other places, the room does a damn fine job of dampening our practices... No complaints in 3 months

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