Soundproofing..... Go Green!!!!!

Our home is not a large home with a seperate basement so, getting away from other rooms in the house is not really an option... unless we sell and build (not happening anytime soon). One of my sons bedrooms is right next to the bonus room where the theater will be built so it will be essential to stopping as much noise as possible from leaving the theater area.


PHASE I

The first thing I am going to do is add a wall. The room is quite large and will allow me to install staggered stud wall that will be heavily insulated and have multiple layers of sheetrock. A staggered stud wall is built with a 2" X 6" at the top, bottom and ends of the wall and staggered 2" X 4" studs creating a 6" deep wall in which the two sides of the wall are not connected to each other except on the outer perimeter (see image below). This will be the back wall of my theater which will also be the dividing wall between the theater and the wall that is oppsite my sons bedroom.


















PHASE II






In between those layers of sheetrock will be Green Glue (http://www.greengluecompany.com/)

Green Glue is a product that is becoming the item of choice for new construction and existing room renovations in the DIY home theater realm. Sandwiched between two or more layers of sheetrock or plywood, green glue creates a dampening layer that absorbs sound vibration, reduces resonance and prevents sound from traveling to the next room. The more layers you use, the better off you are

Simply order from there website (given above) select if you would rather have the tubes (for caulk gun) or 5 gallon bucket with applicator. Squirt it on one sheet of drywall in a random pattern, then attach the sheetrock to the previous piece of sheetrock. There website has a great tutorial on this.

I will be applying this option to all areas of my theater.... Walls, floors and ceiling. I want to be able to watch movies at reference level at 2 o'clock in the morning and nobody complain about it... I'm a night owl and I love movies.



Phase III

Next, we will need to change the doors out to solid core doors. The existing doors are just builder grade interior doors that are, of course, hollow. This means that sound will travel right through them with little resistance. And that is exactly what happens now. When my two boys are upstairs playing Modern Warfare on the Xbox 360, it literally sounds like a war is going on just on the other side of the door.

There are currently 3 doors in this room, one leading into the room itself, one leading to a storage area (changing this one will help with the heating and cooling as well) and there is one going into a closet, which also is right next to one of my boys bedrooms. We will be adding another door to the entrance of the theater so this will help stop even more sound from leaving the theater room.

A hollow core door is made up of a solid wood frame and wood veneer on the front and back but it is cardboard or something very similar and light weight in the middle. (see image below)






















A solid core door is just as it sounds, solid all the way through. This may be solid metal, solid fiberglass or solid wood (what I will be using) but this adds weight and density to the door which assists in stopping sound from traveling past it.

PHASE IV

The room will be divided into two areas, the first area being primarily a walk way to the theater that will house all the audio/video equipment, a microwave and refrigerator, and access to the homes structured wiring closet. The second area, obviously, the theater itself. Since there will be no more sound proofing done in the entrance area other than ean extra layer of sheetrock, green glue, and the swap out of the doors, we will move into the theater itself.

I will be adding another layer of sound control/soundproofing. This layer will assist with the overall sound of the room itself. I will be adding 2" furring strips to the primeter of the room in a stylish format (undetermined right now) and adding 1.5" solid foam insulation panels on the lower 4' sections of the wall and cotton batting on the upper portions of the walls. this will help to deaden the room and control the sound by elimating echos and reflection points from the walls.

Behind the screen there will be dampenning matting on the wall and 4" thick triangle shaped insulation panels stacked in the corners as bass traps.

That just about sums up this addition to my blog. In the next post, I will be discussing the equipment I am considering on using.