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R/E/P => R/E/P Archives => Acoustics in Motion => Topic started by: PeterDraaisma on January 26, 2010, 04:51:03 PM

Title: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on January 26, 2010, 04:51:03 PM
Hello,

After reading a lot on this forum and reading Build it like the pros i still have some questions about floating floors. I want to build my new mix/recording room in my new house on the first floor. The walls and floors/ceilings are made of 25 cm concrete, on both sides i have neighbours. The room in which i want to build my new studio is 2.66m*4.8m*5.45m. I want to use the room for mixing, recording vocals, acoustic guitars and percussion. Do i have to isolate the walls and floors so i don't disturb my neighbours? I read a lot about floating floors, and most people say it is a waste of money, so does anyone have experience with Agglomer floors?

Best Regards,

Peter
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Thomas Jouanjean on January 27, 2010, 05:57:26 AM
PeterDraaisma wrote on Tue, 26 January 2010 15:51

Hello,

After reading a lot on this forum and reading Build it like the pros i still have some questions about floating floors. I want to build my new mix/recording room in my new house on the first floor. The walls and floors/ceilings are made of 25 cm concrete, on both sides i have neighbours. The room in which i want to build my new studio is 2.66m*4.8m*5.45m. I want to use the room for mixing, recording vocals, acoustic guitars and percussion. Do i have to isolate the walls and floors so i don't disturb my neighbours? I read a lot about floating floors, and most people say it is a waste of money, so does anyone have experience with Agglomer floors?

Best Regards,

Peter


Hi Peter,

Floating is only a waste of money if the conditions are such you don't need to float in the first place. Not floating when you *should* be is equally a waste of money as it renders the rest of the money spent on soundproofing useless.

I would float since you have direct neighbourgs.

In this case it's not a question of you accepting a certain amount of solidian transmission and re-emission within the studio, it's a question of futur viability for the whole project: you simply cannot disturb them in any way.

I'll assume that by '1st floor' you mean the "european" 1st floor (for US the '2nd floor') - so not the ground floor but one level up.

Floating on the 1st floor can be tricky because you need to assess the exact properties of your existing floor (load bearing: both static and dynamic loads, elasticity, structure type and so on)

Is your floor really made of 250mm of concrete? This is heavy industrial stuff... In a house, I would not suspect more than 120mm + sand/cement chape finish.

Wrt to the Agglomer, it is not suited for studio. Natural frequency is too high and it's behaviour isn't 'steady' enough. You should look into Sylomer, Merformer or BSW. But then again, only an engineer can make the calculation for you.

You have to build a box in the box...
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on January 27, 2010, 08:14:32 AM
Hi Thomas,

Thanx for the quick reply;-), The studio wil be on the european first floor. I checked the drawings from my house, the floor/ceiling is 25 cm concrete with 5/7 cm sand/cement chape finish. They called it "tunnel bouw"in dutch see the pictures. http://www.joostdevree.nl/bouwkunde2/tunnelbekisting.htm

I called with merford in the Netherlands, they told me that agglomer would do the job....
What would be the easysed solution to build this floor. My idea was to build a box in a box.

Best regards

Peter
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on January 27, 2010, 08:34:25 AM
And what about HOMATHERM silentTop
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Constantin on January 27, 2010, 08:46:14 AM
Hi peter

Floating floors at first floor are a bit tricky.
You have to deal with maximum loads of the existing floor, while watching the mass air mass resonance AND the natural frequnecy of the floated floor.
When you are not able to build a very heavy floor, you must make the airgap of the floor as large as possible, to keep the MAM resonance as low as possible. In your case your celling is quite low, and a floating floor will reduce it again about 20cm - 30cm
And you will also need a decoupled celling, which costs again some hight.

Have a look at the sylomer datasheets. it is a well proven meterial with well known properties.

The calculation of the floor is no magic, but you have to understand the physics behind vibration isolation.

I am sure Thomas is the right Man for this work, when you want to be at the safe site.

cheers
constantin
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Thomas Jouanjean on January 27, 2010, 02:54:10 PM
PeterDraaisma wrote on Wed, 27 January 2010 07:14

I checked the drawings from my house, the floor/ceiling is 25 cm concrete with 5/7 cm sand/cement chape finish. They called it "tunnel bouw"in dutch see the pictures. http://www.joostdevree.nl/bouwkunde2/tunnelbekisting.htm

I called with merford in the Netherlands, they told me that agglomer would do the job....
What would be the easysed solution to build this floor. My idea was to build a box in a box.

Best regards

Peter



Interesting technique with the concrete. Looks fast! Never seen these before on a project. Mainly a lot of Arval Cofrastra etc. stuff on recent buildings.

Re:Merford

Ask them for some Merformer. It's 'similar' to Sylomer. But you have to give them numbers or they can't help you.

Agglomer is not the right choice for you. It's for residential spaces.

You indeed have to be very careful with the air space under the floated floor and how it's managed: it can really mess up the whole spring effect from the Sylomer or equivalent. It can get the resonance frequency much higher than intended with the decoupling material...
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Thomas Jouanjean on January 27, 2010, 06:07:53 PM
PeterDraaisma wrote on Wed, 27 January 2010 07:34

And what about HOMATHERM silentTop
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: franman on January 27, 2010, 10:05:01 PM
I have to agree with what's been said he so far:
1. Yes, you should (properly) float your room given your adjacency.
2. Proper floating floor isolation is not for the faint of heart!! Maybe you should get a consult from Thomas??
3. Don't be looking at the residential sub floor products. They are really not applicable to low frequency isolation requirments in studio applications. They are more about Impact noise isolation.

Do it right the first time, or else skip it. Otherwise, it is a waste of money.

Cheers..FM
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on January 28, 2010, 12:48:14 PM
Thanks for al reactions,it is filling the gap of info for me:-). So if have understand correct have to build a floating floor this way:
http://www.sae.edu/reference_material/audio/pages/floors.htm

And the pieces of neoprene should be Merformer or Sylomer?

Best Regards,

Peter
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: franman on January 28, 2010, 08:41:05 PM
Sorry, but most of this info is garbage. There is no information about engineering for load and deflection. This is the key to any decoupling system. You can't just put neoprene pads under the 2x4 sleepers and expect that you are "floated". It is actually possible that you can create a system with a high enough natural frequency that the transmission of certain low frequencies may be transmitted MORE than without this construction.

Be careful. Look at information from Mason Industries. They have a fairly good tutorial available online geared towards architects, that explains the engineering required for proper structural decoupling. Check it out...
http://www.mason-industries.com/masonind/private/ARCH/arch_m ain.cfm

This is a much better primer than that SAE nonsense....

FM
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Constantin on January 29, 2010, 05:50:17 AM
Thanks for this link fran Razz
I will add another link about it:
http://www.earsc.com/HOME/engineering/TechnicalWhitePapers/V ibration/index.asp?SID=61

Another problem of woodflorrs are the static wight.
Remember you need MASS for good isolation, and i am not sure if 2 layers of 16mm plywood will do the job.
I used in my vocalbooth 2 layers of high compressed 38 mm HDF, which is realy heavy, and make the airgap realy big to bring the MAM reaonance as low as possible. YOu have not the celling hight for this option. MAM resonance is still not in a for music with much bass, needed area, but ok for vocal tracking since i cut anyway all under 80hz.
For a control room this is not an option, so you need more mass, and bigger airgap.
The decoupling is another story, where thomas or fran may can tell you more

cheers
constantin
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: Thomas Jouanjean on January 29, 2010, 09:25:50 AM
Hey! All those are excellent links! (well, not the SAE stuff indeed)

Giving away the goooood stuff  Cool

Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on January 29, 2010, 11:48:16 AM
Thanx, for the links Smile , so the basic idea is the same as with the shock-breakers in a car, if they are to stiff, they are not working.

I'm thinking after looking at the pictures if it is even possible to do it (don't make the joke  Very Happy ha ha) in a room from 2.66m*3.8m*5.45m.....

Fran and Thomas, did you ever designed a good sounding and isolated small room studio?

Best regards
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: franman on January 31, 2010, 09:58:55 PM
Peter,

Of course it's possible. We do rooms that size all the time. We would not be using 250mm Floating Floor systems, but it is possible to get 'good' isolation. You have to work with what you have and what the site will support (what will fit) and then you (or the client) has to understand what performance to expect.!! That's the important part.

FM
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on February 03, 2010, 05:24:36 PM
Thanks Fran,

Great to hear that it is possible to get a good room in my house. Do you have pictures of such rooms on your website? I only have seen big rooms on your site.

Best regards,

Peter
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: franman on February 03, 2010, 10:13:24 PM
You would be surprised what a good wide-angle lens will do to a small room in photos... LOL.. I don't have a lot of photos of smaller project mostly because the owners aren't typically into paying for pro-photos on smaller project. I guess the Ezratty home studio is about 15'x18'x8' (same size range). Probably be surprised if I gave you the dimensions on the new Great City control room (which I won't)... not as large as the lens makes it look.
Title: Re: experience with Agglomer floating floors in
Post by: PeterDraaisma on February 11, 2010, 03:43:51 PM
I talked today with Thomas about the floating floor and to my regret a good floating floor is out of my league. I had no idea what the costs would be for such a construction. So now i'm standing on the ground again and thinking how to proceed with my room.

I know how to treat the room with bass traps, reflection free zone etc. But are there easy and cheaper solutions to disturb my neighbours as little as possible. Would a carpet floor help?
Or such a thing as the poor man's floating floor as discussed on gearslutz...

Btw, Fran those wide-angle lens rule, i thought that the room was way bigger:-)

Best regards,

Peter