Let's talk doors

[Manning]

OK, my isolation booth will have a wall which (from out to in) consists of:

YT (Yellowtongue)/Gyprock/YT - 90mm framed airspace - YT/Gyprock/YT/Gyprock - (acoustic foam). It's roughly 20cm thick.

The entrance will be on a wall with exterior dims of 1800(w) by 2100(h) excluding floor and ceiling.

Currently my thinking on a door has gone as far as "Hmmm, I'll need a door".

I was thinking to make the door identical to the wall in composition. Is this a good idea? Would the door have to be beveled slightly to even open? And how on earth do I seal it?

(Do I need to point out how clueless I am? No, I thought not).

PS - I'm not including a window in my design. 1 - they're hard, 2 - they're expensive and 3 - in my case it can't serve any function due to where I'm building it. I'll install a webcam and artificial light.

[Chinagraf]

The best way to get proper isolation is with 2 doors and an air lock in between them. Rubber seals around the doors.
Does the door go to outside or the control room?

[rick]

nah uh
the best way to get the door sorted is to pay a guy to come in and install the $6000 acoustic door set i have been eyeing off for 25 years ... they work ..

doors in studios .. arghhh

its next on my list of things to reinvent

some of the doors in the abc in ultimo are sublime
i think mr blackburn should do a step by step deconstruction of one and post it up for us all to see

or if there are one or two unused ones in a basement in storage somewhere let me know when you can leave the rollar door up for ten minutes and i will swing past and do a hiest

raven seals .. thats what your going to hear about shortly .. but f@#$ me they make about 50 different models
they all give me the shits !

I have no real world studio door solutions , i tend to smile politely at everybody elses best efforts

i might need to sell a old holy grail microphone shortly to buy the new holy grail acoustic door
but i am going to try and build one first .. well maybe three times before i admit defeat

[jkhuri44]

vaccuum hatch...solves all problems

[Manning]

OK, great idea - I'll put a $6K door in my el cheapo home iso booth. Actually no, I prefer Jamil's idea - I'll put the entire booth inside a vacuum chamber... hmmm, will that influence the singer's breathing?

Back to reality, I looked at the catalog for http://www.doorseals.com.au/index.html but f**k me, I couldn't make sense of any of it.

I like the 2 door approach, and I'll have a 90mm "airlock" between them. But if my doors are 5cm, can I get 5cm seals?

Meanwhile I now have a large pile of 90x45 timber and 3.6m termite proof yellowtongue in my driveway. The delivery guy couldn't get down my 150m drive, so he had to drop it at the street. I then had to haul it down to the house.

Not the most auspicious start to my bit of madness, but oh well.

[gigpiglet]

again.. im with rick.
there is no "good" solution without spending soooo much money

i have gone for the "good enough"
hollow core door (bunnings) plus a sheet of MDF on each side (makes it pretty fat/ heavy/ good) and raven seals.
and again i agree with rick... 50 models and they all give me the shits

but if you do that twice (as in a double wall needs a double door)
then it ends up pretty good

definitely my weak point though...

[rob]

I had some nice doors made for my listening room that open to the outside. I got the door-making-man to add some double seal things cause while this is no studio, just a room with a loud stereo in it, I didn't want to annoy the neighbours too much. Anyhow the double seal thing seemed like a brilliant idea but after doors were all hung I needed a jimmy bar to prise them shut. So I had to ditch one of the seals.

I know nothing about doors but apparently you need them.

[Drumstruck]

Doors? I had a door but it didn't fit... so my door leads to Rick's studio

So when's that door opening Rick? I'm surely not the only one wanting to spy your new digs ......

[rick]

actually the acoustic uk book you kind gents fronted up for me as a present in the dark times last year has a set of blueprints on how they build acoustic doors , i read it ..memorised it , noted the construction and promptly forgot every detail ..
so i could deal with the more pressing matters at hand

Manning to the bat cave , find that book read about doors .. its up the backof the book i think
report back in

when you find you book tell me where in the house you put it .. i will check my house and see if we match !

[Manning]

Book found easily - the wife put it in the bookshelf so I can see it from where I type.

Page 216 is the section on doors... L'orient drop threshold seals anyone?

"A heavy duty overhead door closer is generally used to keep the doors pressed tightly against the seals".

I have no idea what that means.

[rick]

oh yes ian .. that door
umm it had some issues ..
didnt quite fit in its own frame, i do believe right door wrong frame wrong frame right door ?
and the metal threads on the hinges were mostly stripped so it could not go anywhere critical

however it is now in a hallway doing a pretty good job of being a great door !

website is snaking along there will be pretty photos soon enough
anybody that has been here so far will attest there is always some thing or another left to do
but i am working away .. lots of work which is great

now manning werent there blueprints of the door construction , or is that some other acoustic book i have forgotten where is ..?
drop threshold seals yes please .. when you find them and order them tell me where you got them i will have a set too

[Junction]

some of the doors in the abc in ultimo are sublime
i think mr blackburn should do a step by step deconstruction of one and post it up for us all to see

or if there are one or two unused ones in a basement in storage somewhere let me know when you can leave the rollar door up for ten minutes and i will swing past and do a hiest

Ha .... I'll bring the tools into work next week and do a core sample and see whats in there ... oh wait, how am i going to patch up the hole?

I'll do you a deal Rick, pickup the two doors, one for you, one for me

but seriously, its like everything, a suitable amount of mass is required so a single leaf studio door, but it will end up being as heavy as f@#%, so your door frame needs serious attention as well as suitable hinges, you dont want this thing moving in any other direction than it was intended to.

I did a DIY studio door some years ago, I got two 35mm solid timber frame (domestic) glass doors, had the glass replaced with 10mm laminated in one door and 12mm laminated in the 2nd door, then I glued the two together with another manufactured frame of about 50mm thick, so the whole door ended up being about 120mm thick, and the air gap between glass was about 85mm. This worked pretty damn good, no scientific measurements though.

I bought something similar from NAP Seals in Singapore, double glass doors but with all steel frame, they cost about $2-2,500 assembled in the frame, with magnetic door seals, they worked a treat until the really thick aluminium hinges bent, luckily we were able to swap the hinges for stainless steel ones quite easily.

I'll do some fishing next week and see if I can work out whats inside our doors at work

[Drumstruck]

oh yes ian .. that door
umm it had some issues ..
didnt quite fit in its own frame, i do believe right door wrong frame wrong frame right door ?
and the metal threads on the hinges were mostly stripped so it could not go anywhere critical

however it is now in a hallway doing a pretty good job of being a great door !

Oh damn - sorry to hear that - it was a heavy enough lump without it being mismatched......

[Alastair Reynolds]

With the heavy duty door closer comment Manning posted earlier , to get around having really heavy closers on our doors with 1 of the 50 available Raven seals , we run slightly higher air pressure from the Air Con system in the room the door opens into, so as to keep the seal. it does get a tiny whistle as it closes and the drop seal closes.
Doors are 12mm lam Glass in heavy frames into either a airlock with a second door or a virtual lock ala Peter Brown (Popular in SBS and some ABC installations that he has designed)
just another way of doing it

[rick]

"tiny whistle"
for the tech in the room down the hall

equals i am going to F@#$ing murder somebody if i have to lean on that door to stop it one more time today
for the guy that works in the room

door seals.. closers.. latches .. the whole system hurts my head

now at least i am finally admitting ... i have to get on to it

how is your free $6000 acoustic door storage system ..?
do you have a 10 minute stop work meeting coming up
i will be around in five .. just tell me when the coast is clear !

[Alastair Reynolds]

I'll leave a key under the milk bottles and a charged powerdriver next to the doors

[justmull]

In my modest studio I have these seals fitted on a 45mm solid core door
http://www.lorientuk.com/products/acous ... /is7090-si
http://www.lorientuk.com/products/acous ... /is8020-si
It works well - not as good as a 2 door system but if you don't have the space

[rick]

justin do you know where you bought them ..?
i cannot find a local agent

i am not taking the raven route unless i have to .. ( raven stuff is great but i would just like somebody to decode their brochure and then put a price and a place to buy the things i want ! )

[Barney Loveland]

Not much to add, but my door will be going in next week. This will be an airtight shed in the backyard.

I'm using this hinge - http://ravcocontinuoushinge.com/ which I saw in Mat's studio (Colousound) Model 75 351, can hang 250kg on this hinge.

And a 40mm thick, heavy hard wood frame with 2x 7mm laminate glass with argon gas spacer.

Door Seals Australia seals, drop down seal at bottom and two others, it's in their catalogue.

Hoping for around 40-50dBish. With the option to hang another door on the inside if it doesn't work or when funds allow.

[rick]

see i learn something new every day how much does a continous hinge thingy cost ?

[Barney Loveland]

From memory 2040mm was $100-110.

[Senad]

Oh man...acoustics ..I'm dead tired, should go to bed..
MAnning, when I built my old place I made my doors out of mdf. I took 3 boards of 18mm mdf and glued and screwed them together (laminated them). I used 3 heavy duty hinges on each (or was it 4 hinges...will try to find a pic). Each of these doors weighed 65kgs. THey cost about 40-50 bucks each to make and were soundproof as hell. As someone pointed out before, you should have a door in each wall (which i think you're doing right?, and not just connecting outter and inner walls by a door). I sealed them with some neoprene rubber I bought in a roll from Clark rubber. The way you do it is:
You hang a door on a door jamb
You Close the door so its flush with the inner edges of door jamb and mark the door jambs from the outside with a pencil around the whole door
You stick some neoprene (I had 6mm thickness) on your uninstalled door stops all around
You now follow the line you marked and fix the stops to thew door jamb so that the rubber is 2mm over the pencil line towards the inside.
When you now close your door so its flush with the edge of the jamb, your rubber will be compressed by 2mm giving you a perfect seal all around.
MAterials for each door made,hung and sealed should cost about 70-75 bucks.

OK found a pic..4 hinges

CAn't post a pic...400x400 pixels telling me has to be les than 600 high
Good night

[justmull]

justin do you know where you bought them ..?
i cannot find a local agent

Hey Rick - the builder sourced them but we gave him the lead of lorient.com.au - looks like they've changed name to kilargo.com.au

[Junction]

Oh man!! been fishing around trying to work out what we have at the ABC and what I have done with other projects .... no easy answer. If I had a single leaf construction and wanted to do it with one door, then you could achieve STC 41 (25dB at 100Hz & 49dB at 5KHz) with a Raven RP70 (door bottom seal), RP78 Si for the side and top jamb (this just screws on the jamb and is easily adjustable) and a silicon seal that sits inside the side and top frame, effectively creating a double seal on the side and top frames The door would have to be a 54mm solid core timber door, I would manufacture this with three sheets, the middle sheet 25mm thick, cut short in length so the 25mm thick bottom seal assembly can just slide inside.
See page 24 of the Raven Seal doc, very top left imagehttp://111.118.175.96/files/RAVEN_Catalogue_112_WEB.pdf

Double doors obviously work better but can be inconvenient, needing space, twice the amount of work and cost

At the ABC our Music Studios have 70mm thick doors and a small port hole window, our Radio Studios have 60mm thick doors and large sheet 20mm thick glass window. They are solid timber, but I think a sandwich cnstruction, I believe there is a lead sheet in there, but I cant see the layers through the paint unfortunately. All of our double door arrangements are not in a back to back frame, but a sound lock room, i.e. you go thru one door into a small room and then a second door into the studio.

The biggest problem you will face besides designing and putting this together is to keep the door shut, I have never found a suitably robust door closer that will keep the door tightly shut for years of operation. So you either need some sort of door latch to tightly hold it shut or you could put metal strips around the perimeter of the door face and use magnetic seals (like on a fridge) that help hold it shut. RP39 and RP85 seals are magnetic, but I cant see what their STC rating would be in an assembly.

The Raven seal catalogue is pretty good, you just need some patience crawling over it and you should find most of the answers there.

[Ben M]

Hi Manning. How's things?
Just wanted to throw this door detail into the mix. Just the door detail not this jam.
Could be beneficial for you if your booth floor is evelated of the ground. It could be a good way of achieving an effective seal all the way around by overlapping the jam by 50mm or so.
So the small door could fit in the jam and the large door could cover over the edge of the jam by ?? whatever you like. Then work some bunnings door seal material in the appropriate spaces

door detail.jpg

Seeing you have the "el cheap booth budget" I'd recommend a salvage yard for some solid core doors. Buy the doors first and make the booth opening fit your secondhand doors rather than the other way around...if you know what I mean.
Best of luck!

[Drumstruck]

You can often get some good stuff at the local tips if you live in the country - I got a double aluminium sliding door for $50 (compared to over 1K for a new one) and they had a stack of wooden doors.

[Manning]

Some may have noticed my absence from the forum for the past week... I have been living in my driveway surrounded by timber, tools and incompetence.

What on earth was I thinking trying to build this booth? Oh yeah, I couldn't find anyone else willing to do this except Senad and he's in Melbourne.

Anyway, it is day 7 of the build and my skills are certainly improving. Which is to say I'm finally starting to not have to tear things apart 3 times just to get close to right.

No pics, because if I did you'd look and say "seven days work for that?" and I'd feel even more foolish than I do at present.

Hope all are well. I have one more week off work. Progress had better improve.

[Senad]

Haha..hang in there man. Although it's slow progress, you know what they say - pics or it didn't happen.

[Manning]

At this moment your doubt is preferable to your knowing the truth.

Pics will come when I feel slightly more has been accomplished.

[Drumstruck]

measure twice / cut once


and remember, a photo of something that looks terrible now brings much joy to others