(NOTE: Our Architect Brian Gaddis has been following this blog, and corrected me this morning. They're JOISTS. I want to keep things as technically correct as I can given my feeble knowledge of these matters.)
Jerry, our intrepid Superintendent, knows how curious I am about every phase of construction. There I stood this afternoon, looking up with that curious look on my face. "Come on," he said. Into the scissor lift we went for a nice safe ride into the steel girders so I could get a bird's eye view of the progress.
GEEKY DETAIL ALERT! In typical construction the cross members between rafters are normally evenly spaced. (I've learned this is called "blocking".) For our application the blocking is random. Why?
Once the rafters are covered with the top layers of soundproofing, cavities will be created underneath. When you introduce sound into the room beneath, each of those cavities will resonate at a specific frequency. If every cavity is the same size, they'll resonate at the same frequency, multiplying the effect by the number of cavities. So, by making the size of the cavities random, we eliminate (or at least minimize) undesirable buildup of sound at a specific frequency.
That's the geeky explanation. The plain English explanation? Random blocking helps make the room sound nice and even.
In this shot, the first soundproof layer is being laid over Studio 1.
That's 3/4" OSB, if you're interested. 1/2" plywood goes over that with seams staggered. In between is a generous layer of soundproofing adhesive called "Green Glue". This stuff is amazing. It actually converts sound energy to heat and dissipates it before it can penetrate the next layer. (Here's a REAL geek-fest. It's technically called a "visco-elastic damping compound". Whee!)
Like I've said...when it comes to acoustics and sound isolation, we're leaving no stone unturned. (Within the limitations of our budget, of course.)
Until next time...
1 comment:
The tear down process seems to be less time consuming than the rebuilding of the storage system but equipment such as forklifts and scissor Lift are need for both the tear down and rebuilding of the storage system adding another cost to the project.
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