Bought me a new house!! Now... how do you soundproof a garage?

[Bob O'Brian]

Just bought a new house... quite a big step up from the flat I'm in, and it needs a load of work, but should be worth it in the end.

There's a decent sized garage built into the house, which is earmarked for band practise space. At the moment it has bare concrete floor and walls, a large window at the end, and wooden doors at the front with small windows. I guess this'll be a recipe for awful, harsh sound

Unfortunately I'm going to be spending every penny I have on the house itself, so I need to sound-proof the garage on a shoestring budget. I will have plenty of old carpets, curtains etc: can I simply use these to line the walls and floor? If so, should leave an air gap between the material and the wall?

I'm aiming to primarily improve the sound inside the garage, but I also need to dampen it a bit from outside; there are neighbours within a couple of hundred yards who may not apprecipate good music

Cheers for any advice.

[BeeTL]

Congratulations on the new house!

 

Rock wool and burlap are likely your best bets for acoustic damping on a budget. Most other materials really don't work well, acoustically speaking.

 

Here is the place to read up on room acoustics:

 

http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=24&page=1&PHPSESSID=fc55d0c04b5557c8e27de05d4547d7f2

 

Ethan's original article on Bass Traps:

 

http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html

 

A post of mine on the topic of neighbors:

 

http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1659119&page=0&fpart=1

 

Have fun!

[Darkstorm]

Best thing imo would be go ahead and spend the money for regular studio style sound insulation that meets fire code standards. Since your doing lot of work on house anyway. Indoor/outdoor carpet for floor areas that cars wont be ever using as another good choice imo. Can be a bit spendy this way, but safer and better results acoustically esp if you ever want to use the space for recording too.

[Bob O'Brian]

Well I'm not going to use it for recording- just practise space. I can get access to a studio if we ever record.

One aspect that I shoudl mention is that I'll be moving out of the house in three of four years time (work-related reasons) so anything I do needs to be easily reversible and not cost too much. It's not really a long-term thing.

 

BeeTl- thanks for the links. Surprised to read that styrofoam doesn't work for sound insulation; clearly intuition itsn't going to help me out too much here!

 

I think my hardest problem will be the garage doors. At the moment there's a set of double, side-hinged, wooden doors, which need replaced anyway. These face the neighbours, making them a sound isolation priority, but I also need to be able to shift gear in and out easily so I want to retain the large doors. Anyway, I might actually want to put the car in the garage occasionally.

 

Not asking much, is it

[Fireball_73]

Egg boxes!

 

I reherse in the drummers garage - the band used to get lots of complaints - then I joined

 

Best of luck

[Mudbass]

Egg boxes!

 

Bad idea. Egg boxes are very flamable.

[zeke27]

Yeah, flammable sound material can be a drag when you lose track of a lit cigarette. Most foam plastics produce smoke that will kill you fast.

You probably read that you need two kinds of sound treatment: one to attenuate the sound in the room so it doesn't bounce around and mush up, and one to keep the sound from vibrating your neighbor's windows.

 

Use carpet and non flammable foam for inside sound control. (most commercial carpets are non flammable Look for the ones with a class A or B rating or Type I or II critical radiant flux)

To keep your neighbors happy, you need mass, like masonry walls, or layers of gypsum board on walls and ceiling. If you're not staying, it might not be worth the cost.

Consider using heavy blankets (mover's blankets) over the garage doors. Not perfect, but could help.

Good luck.

[Perfessor]

Keeping your neighbor's supplied with beer is the best sound dampening method out there.

[Bob O'Brian]

Thanks for the ideas. I'm going to be extending Scotland's smoking ban to my garage too... it's only our guitard who smokes and he's trying to give up. But even without cigarettes around, I can see how egg boxes could be somewhat dangerous.

I've just been doing some numbers on the new house and we have NO spare money so this really needs to be done on the cheap, at least initially.

I think I understand the difference between internal sound deadening (attenuation) and isolation. For the former, I'm hoping that old carpet will do the trick when used to line the walls (old carpet is something I have in abundance).

For isolation, I'll make up a plug for the window, and for the doors... well, I'll think of something. I was going to make new ones anyway so I guess I can just make them really thick and fill them with rock-wool. I can make up a good wide frame for them to seal against, except at the bottom because that would stop me driving a car inside if/when I need to.

 

Re: gypsum board- I will have quite a lot of this (in more-or-less scrap form) lying around because I've got some stud walls to remove. Might it be an idea to build it into the new doors to increase sound isolation properties?

[frunobulax]

the heavier you make the garage doors, the more likely they'll fail (fall out of alignment, not close, etc.). repair or rebuild what you've got without worrying about making the doors soundproof.

 

your garage is concrete, so most of your sound leakage is going to come from the doors and the window. (and that's the direction fo your neighbors as well.)

 

my recommendation would be to build a stud wall about 6" in front of the garage doors. build it from wall to wall, insulate it with rock wool and then 2 layers of sheetrock (ideally with a spacer between the layers). if the garage doors are the primary access to the garage, stick a solid core door in the new wall at one of the garage doors.

 

short money, easily removable when you sell up.

 

the carpet will do well for deadening the hard surfaces.

[T. Alan Smith]

There's a difference between tuning a room to sound better, and soundproofing. To soundproof a room, you need mass and air. You need to build and float one room made up of a dense material within another room made up of even more dense material, with an airgap in between the two rooms. You also need to think of your electrical and ventilation systems to make sure there are no air gaps allowing sound to escape.

[guitargod0dmw]

Do this if you want something that just helps cut down of volume, we have done this to our practice space:

 

Carpet the walls. We have a basement that is full concrete...it's loud. Once we added carpet to the walls, if cut down on a lot of excess noise. We didn't do it to make a great sounding room, we did so the cops wouldn't get called 3 times a week when we play. We also took a hollow door, drilled a few holes in one side of it, and then filled it up with the expanding foam that Home Depot sells. It's works REALLY well. So instead of buying a soundproof door for $1K or more, you can buy an $80 door plus 2 cans of foam for under $100.

 

Note about foam: DON'T spray the whole can inside of a door. When they say that stuff expands, they mean it! We put two whole cans in our door, and then hung it up. About an hour later, the door exploded! We had to shave the foam so we could get it to close again, and then glued it back together. It works great now...

[Bob O'Brian]

Do this if you want something that just helps cut down of volume, we have done this to our practice space: Carpet the walls. We have a basement that is full concrete...it's loud. Once we added carpet to the walls, if cut down on a lot of excess noise. We didn't do it to make a great sounding room, we did so the cops wouldn't get called 3 times a week when we play. We also took a hollow door, drilled a few holes in one side of it, and then filled it up with the expanding foam that Home Depot sells. It's works REALLY well. So instead of buying a soundproof door for $1K or more, you can buy an $80 door plus 2 cans of foam for under $100. Note about foam: DON'T spray the whole can inside of a door. When they say that stuff expands, they mean it! We put two whole cans in our door, and then hung it up. About an hour later, the door exploded! We had to shave the foam so we could get it to close again, and then glued it back together. It works great now...

 

Haha, that expanding foam is cool stuff. The first time I used it was to insulate a window surround- squirted it in, screwed the wood back into place, and in the morning there were these weird tentacles of green foam snaking out into the air from every tiny gap it could find. Some of them were more than three feet long

 

I thought expanded foam didn't work though? Maybe I shouldn't believe everything I read.

 

I'm definately going to start by carpeting the floor and walls, because I can do that for ZERO cost. I still think the big garage doors will be more difficult to deal with.

Expect updates in a few weeks' time...

[guitargod0dmw]

I would probably put more carpet on the garage doors as well. Just make sure that you cut it into sections, so the joints can move properly. You can also hang a section of carpet about a foot from the doors (after you carpet them as well) which would create a "room within a room" and great reduce your SPL. The first sheet of hanging carpet will take a brunt of the sound waves, then it will travel through the air into the doors which should absorb a good amount of sound as well...greatly reducing the sound outside. Try it out and see what works, I know that it has worked for us at 3 different locations...

[Bob O'Brian]

I would probably put more carpet on the garage doors as well. Just make sure that you cut it into sections, so the joints can move properly. You can also hang a section of carpet about a foot from the doors (after you carpet them as well) which would create a "room within a room" and great reduce your SPL. The first sheet of hanging carpet will take a brunt of the sound waves, then it will travel through the air into the doors which should absorb a good amount of sound as well...greatly reducing the sound outside. Try it out and see what works, I know that it has worked for us at 3 different locations...

 

Excellent suggestion, I will definately try this out

[RSBro]

Buy the neighbors a 6 pack every week or two?

 

 

[Roguetitan]

Haha, that expanding foam is cool stuff. The first time I used it was to insulate a window surround- squirted it in, screwed the wood back into place, and in the morning there were these weird tentacles of green foam snaking out into the air from every tiny gap it could find. Some of them were more than three feet long I thought expanded foam didn't work though? Maybe I shouldn't believe everything I read. I'm definately going to start by carpeting the floor and walls, because I can do that for ZERO cost. I still think the big garage doors will be more difficult to deal with. Expect updates in a few weeks' time...

 

I heard expanding foam dont work either

this is evidently information from someone who has never actually used expanding foam because it worked for me.

[chubrocker]

Hmmm. In college we just took old mattresses and glued them to the walls with heavy duty construction adhesive. Worked pretty well.

[Craig Vecchione]

Neighbors are a couple hundred yards away? Definitely wait before dealing with sound attenuation. Anything effective is expensive.

 

Carpet the floor, but rethink the walls until you can afford real damping materials.....carpet hung vertically is as bad or worse than eggcrates for flammability. It's also going to constantly drop dust and whatever else landed in it into the air. If you don't have allergies now, you will....

 

Since you've got little or no money, now's the time to at least invest a few bucks for a book on building studios. They have lots of ideas and theory that can help you keep from totally wasting your time, and what little money you have. It's a LOT more involved than nailing up some foam.

[B-Bottom]

 

There's a difference between tuning a room to sound better, and soundproofing. To soundproof a room, you need mass and air. You need to build and float one room made up of a dense material within another room made up of even more dense material, with an airgap in between the two rooms. You also need to think of your electrical and ventilation systems to make sure there are no air gaps allowing sound to escape.

 

 

+1

[ModmanQ6]

This is what I do every day for a living. The foam and carpet and egg crate stuff are great for changing the interior room dynamics, but won't block sound very well unless you have a lot of it in really thick layers. Foam and carpet will absorb reflections and kill reverb in the room, egg crates will stop slap echoes by diffusing the sound and breaking up flat reflections, which will retain the brightness without muddying the sound.

It takes mass to block sound. Generally speaking, a dense product that weighs 1 lb per square foot is the product of choice. This used to be rolls of lead, but now is generally a mass loaded vinyl product which comes in both reinforced (so it can be hung by itself as curtain panels etc...) and non-reinforced versions to be used in a wall behind the sheet rock (attached to the studs and caulked at all seams). Call me if you like (800-782-5742) and I'll talk you through it and educate you - no sale required... Check out our website in my sig too - it's very very informative... :thu:

[rummy]

When I had my house built, I asked them not to finish my garage. I was planning on using B-Quiet/Dynamat to deaden the sound before putting in the foam stuff. Well, three years have passed, and my garage is still not finished, and I'm still playing in teh basement. lol lazy

[BEAD]

I think if you aren't going to life there a long time knowing your neighbors and limiting loud practices to once or twice a week in the early evening will go much farther than soundproofing with carpets.

 

My neighbors all know that band practice will end promptly at 9pm, and that if they need us to quiet down we welcome them to come over and let us know.

 

No complaints after three years.

[Crescent Seven]

If your neighbors are a couple hundred yards away and your walls are concrete, they aren't gonna hear {censored}. Worry about the interior of the room first. The carpet is a good start, if the ceiling is open to the roof you will want to hang that scrap sheetrock to the studs. Moving blankets behind the carpet will help more. Also, try to get some carpet padding to put on the floor under the carpet; anything you can do to cover the walls with anything is going to be helpful. If the garage door is giving you reflections, just hang a piece of the carpet the width of the room from the ceiling about 3 feet from the door, like a false wall.

 

Give the neighbors your number and rock the {censored} out.

C7

[Bob O'Brian]

Bump.

Three weeks until we move into the new house, and my understanding of sound isolation is improving all the time. I can't wait to get started

 

One thing I'm having trouble with, though, is the various different approaches that I can take on this. I understand that there are many different things I can do to reduce sound penetration, but which ones are more effective? For example:

- mass (thick concrete walls, multiple layers of plasterboard etc)

- hollow wall insulation (rockwool? Is there anything better?)

- air gaps (are these more effective than gaps filled with rockwool? More effective than a solid wall of the same thickness?)

- geometry (what's the effect of building walls/ceilings at odd angles?)

- direction (is it possible to concentrate soundproofing attempts on the most critical area only? Would it actually help if I let the sound escape in a non-critical direction?)

 

For reference, my current plan is to, firstly, replace the garage doors with heavier ones made with 4" framing and dense chipboard internal panelling, with rockwool filling; a few feet inside of this I will build a false wall, possibly at a slight angle, using staggered studs and chipboard and/or plasterboard, with rockwool filling. The rest of the garage will be treated with a lining of old carpet and by boarding up the window, with sandbags placed inside.

 

One option I've toyed with is creating walls filled with sand- obviously they'd need to be built very strong, but since I live literally a couple of hundred yards from a beach, I can get the required quantity of sand for free, and it would add a huge amount of mass. What would be the effect of a solid wall built like this, rather than a hollow wall with rockwool and staggered studs?

 

Finally, if the carpet lining is hung a few inches out from the wall, will it work better than if it is contact with the wall?

 

So much to think about

 

Cheers,

 

Bob