Slab Floor

[Mac Man]

Hey Everyone!

I need some help. I just bought my first home and will be redoing the converted garage to be the kitchen/dining room/ living room (this will have the home theater), but to have it to code I need to insulate the slab foundation....one way to do this is to do a raise floor and insulate it that way. I figured that if I was to do that I might as well isolate it for acoustic reasons, so my question is, does anyone know of good isolation material for the "floating floor"

Thanks

 

[gregz]

Can't think of why you'd need to isolate it, but the door is sure open to running protected wire conduits underneath so that you have banana plugs built in at each determined speaker location. Then, you could connect your speakers with minimal jumpers from floor to terminals. That would be CLEAN and sharp!

 

[jaxvon]

Indeed, if you didn't build a floating floor, you could stop the whole place from shaking due to the mass of the concrete. However, you may want this effect, in which case, go ahead. I agree with gregz, it would make the whole wiring thing really clean and professional. Still, going with good thick carpet and pad would yield great results and prevent you from having resonance issues with the floor. In fact, a friend's amateur studio is built in his renovated garage and it's just carpet w/pad on the floor. He just has lots of sound absorbing stuff around the place and an absorbing ceiling. It's nice and dead.

In the end, it's all about the sound and look you want to create (and your budget).

 

[Az B]

When I finished my basement room into a listening room/HT, I used tile. Simple, easy, looks great. Acoustically good too.

 

[Mac Man]

Let me try again

Thanks for the advice; however, I need to clear some things up...

I HAVE to have a raised floor (it has to meet code for the insulation factor of the slab) so it WILL have a raised floor....I was trying to find out about the little isolating "U" channels that are used when building a "Room within a room" for a dedicated home theater. I'm not worried about the wire runs...that I know...what I wanted to find out is if there is anyone who has built a "room within a room" home theater and what they used for isolation.

Thanks

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

All you have to do is isolate the raised floor from the walls. This means tying the wall baseplate/studs directly to the slab AND leaving a small gap between the wall materials and the floor materials. No special isolation materials needed. I've made a quick and dirty drawing. If the thumbnail looks like a black rectangle, it's OK. Click it to see the drawing.

Any transmission thru the slab itself is negligable and may be safely disregarded. The slab functions much like ground in an electrical circuit. Any rigid materials touching each other thus bypassing the ground makes an acoustical "short circuit" which is what you want to avoid.

The gap is disguised by the base moulding.

The REAL hard part is isolating the ceiling from the walls!

 

[WorkerBee]

Rip,
That looks like a great way to handle that "violent shaking rattling vibrating" of the walls thing.......cool inexpensive idea

 

[Mac Man]

Thanks

Thanks Rip!

I found out that I don't need to have a raised floor after all...I guess it helps to talk to the right county building supervisor.