Sound Spaces: How to Quiet Your Home

(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to the BS in Beer Show. Tonight we are talking sound spaces how to quiet your home. So very excited. I am Emily Matrim, architect here in Maine. Tonight I am still drinking the lovely Agua from the Energy New Brunswick, shout out to our Canadian friends. But BS in Beer is a grassroots, independent movement. Here to show our building science knowledge through our local meetup groups and this our Zoom show. Shout out to our two new local groups too. The brew crew and our guests volunteer our time each week to make this informative discussion for you guys. I'm going to encourage you to start your own local group for more information on how to get started, visit the BS in Beer Show.com or to find a group in your local area that may already be started. The video recording for tonight's show will be available through Green Building Advisor and up on our YouTube channel, the BS in Beer Show. And we want to just give a shout out and thanks to our Media Partners Green Building Advisor and Fine Home Building Magazine for helping us make this happen every month. So Mike, you got some announcements? - Yes, yes I do. Mike mains a designer in Maine. Tonight I am drinking not just a beer, my version of a light beer, which is a shandys, so sort of a utilitarian beer and some good citrus soda. It makes a really nice tasty summertime beer. And so announcements we have several tonight. First off, the Building Science and Pozium Series in Boston next week is sold out. I feel very lucky to have gotten a ticket and I can't wait to be there. There is one more chance to attend in 2025, in October, in Chicago, Chicago Illinois. So register there for that one while you can. I'll put a link in the chat box, Travis, and his team here put a ton of effort into making these two day conferences very fun and educational and incredibly affordable. So that's the Building, the Chicago Building Science opposing October 8th and 9th. Also next week, Emily will be in Denver, leading construction instructions, women in construction, second annual Building Science training summit, along with fellow expert and friend of BS and beer, Nikki Krueger. There will be presentations, round tables and networking opportunities focused on building science, empowerment, and building confidence. A double entanglement there, I'll make it. I'm chronically behind on podcasts that I want to listen to, but I recently binged the entire library of one I highly recommend for builders and for anyone interested in learning how top-notch builders think and what they care about. It's called the Building Consensus Podcast with their own Travis Brungart and fellow contractor Brandon Jones. The neat premise, their show is that they have very different approaches to how they work, but they debate a specific topic, respectfully, until they reach a common understanding available at a link in anywhere you can find podcasts. Find podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, Emily released a couple of excellent new episodes of her podcast, Energy and Efficiency with Emily, E3 with Emily over the summer. We'll put a link to that in the chat. And last, but certainly not least, Atlanta now has a BS and Bear Group. The first meeting will be next week with Allison Bales presenting on HVAC Design, Registration has reached capacity for that event, but joined their Instagram page organized by Builder Chris Knight, along with the Self-Based Institute and the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association to stay on top of upcoming events. Few, that was a lot. Travis, over to you for introductions. And Mike, I can't thank you enough for the kindness on the podcast and definitely go listen to the E3 podcast with Emily and go see her in Denver. So thanks for that shout out. I am Travis Brungard, I am in Kansas City. And so I'm drinking a KC Birko Hellis Logger, which I think I'll enjoy very much. So I'll load that into a protective container while I tell you about our wonderful guests. We have Bennett Brooks, the president of Brooks Acoustics Corporation, an acoustical consulting firm addressing sound isolation between interior spaces, mechanical system noise, occupied space sound quality, exterior noise control at the property line for environmental code compliance, permitting, site development, and planning. Now, they also provide state-of-the-art audio-visual design services, Brooks is an MIT graduate and licensed professional engineer among many other accomplishments. And you can look at BrooksAcoustics.com. Michael put that in the chat as he's want to do. We also have my good friend, Michael Crane, which you guys know, Michael. But Michael's a business skill at manager for MP global products who provide building materials with a focus on wall assembly applications. Now, Michael leads the building materials in Acoustics Division, spearheading the launch of practical acoustical solutions. He has a passion for the building industry, as you well know, and a commitment to quality craftsmanship, a BS in business administration. He's held key roles at several companies, including most recently, our friends at Rockwell. And that's how I got to know him. But Michael is the organizer of BS in beer in Austin, Texas. So you get the tip of the hat for that. And he's been instrumental in helping numerous other groups start. So I'm thrilled to have you both here. I can't wait for you guys to both tell us what you're drinking. And then we can get started with our presentation. How about you go first, Bennett? - Okay, well, thank you very much, Travis, for the kind introduction. Great to be with all you guys. And this is exciting for me. I love talking about this stuff. So we do have about two or three hours, right? So never mind. All right. If you drink more, it sounds better. I'm drinking Pemicwood ale here in the mid coast of Maine right now. Right down the block from Emily pretty much. And there's the Pemicwood light. And if you want to get another view of the Pemicwood light, you can look at the main quarter dollar because it is the symbol on the main quarter. So anyway, cheers everybody, it's a dark ale, it's nice. - Here's to that. How about you, Michael? What are you drinking tonight? - I am drinking. Okay, so first off, Emily, I got here a week early. I thought your thing was this week and not next week. So, sorry. - Big round. - Just kidding, there's an audio of visual conference in town. So I'll try to keep Denver, Denver while when you get here. - Sorry. - So I'm drinking a local Denver beer from Bruce Brewing Company. It is a happy, so it's one of my favorites this time of year. And that's what I'm drinking. - Excellent choice. We're off to a strong start. Is my understanding that you prepared a little presentation to get things rolling, isn't that correct? - I did, I have about, you know, 15, 10, 15, 20 minutes. It's gonna go pretty quick, just to give a little basics on building science for sound. And then a couple of kind of case studies, just to get the warmups going. And then happy to hear all of your stories on good things and not so good things that happen with sound in buildings. - Well, the chat's popping already, but let's get your presentation started and then we'll go to the chat after. - Okay, so I share my screen for that? - Yes. - Yeah, okay, I can do that. Let's see, sharing is not turned on, okay. - Oh, let me fix it. - Hey. - I thought it was. - Well, we can, we can work there now. - Okay, now you can. - Let's try again. - I turned the chat on. They yell at me about that every week, too. - Wow, look at that, she did it. - Poor Emily, she gets blamed for everything technical. It's not your fault. - Wow, okay, so let's-- - Definitely my fault, I should know better by now. Just be on the whole screen, why not? - Well, ideally this would be a good time for everyone to update their software. That's usually what I get when I try to change anything in a presentation. - All right, so let's see if I put on the slide show. Let's see if that works. - Ooh, that looks nice. - That's really nice stuff. - Looks good. - Okay, well great, well thank you very much for having me, BS and beer and to our wonderful hosts. It's great to be with you all, Emily. Michael Travis and my fellow presenter, so Mike, so we'll get to all that. But the question was, well, how do you quiet your home? And I'm assuming we're all talking pretty much right now about single family residences. Is that true? Single homes, but a lot of this applies to multi-family as well. So am I on the right direction, Emily? Am I going the right way here? - Yes. - Okay, all right, let's move on and let's see. So we've got issues and you've already mentioned some of them, Travis, sound in the home, in residences, sound isolation between occupied spaces, kitchens, bedrooms, family rooms, and more. And so, and then there's noise here. inside the home that would be created by something outside or something inside, and then what is the acoustical quality, meaning how does it sound perceptually, and a lot of that depends on the reverberation and the echoes inside, and that goes directly with the volume of the space, how big the room is, and what the surface finish materials are, how much absorption is in there, and yes, you're a little, you know, blanket that you wear over yourself, that'll help, and a little bit of carpeting that'll help, but doesn't do everything, so we can get you some better materials. There's some more issues. Do we have issues with noise at the property line? We've had to put somebody's air conditioner inside their garage because the neighbor didn't like it, believe it or not, this stuff happens, so we get there, and then what is the perceived quality inside the building and all around, outside on the patio? So everywhere you go, there is sound. You may not notice it at first, but after a while you will, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes you'll say, I don't like this. So what do we do if we don't like it, or how do we plan to make it great? That's kind of where we're trying to go with this. Well, we start with the highest quality design and construction possible, and a lot of you are in the design business, and a lot of you out there, I know, are in the construction business, either as GCs or subs, possibly, and every piece is important. It all comes together in the building, so we have to kind of pay attention right from the start. That's the best way to solve the problem, not. Well, we've got calls like we're pouring concrete tomorrow. Can you fix this? And so we've done that, and we've also come back when there is a problem where we didn't think it was going to be, but we've been living here for a couple of months, and it sounds really bad. So when you start off, and hopefully you start your next project thinking about this, you want to start with the highest quality you can, and you also want to manage the owner expectations, so that if they're living in the middle of an interstate, like in the little island between the north and south lanes, they're going to expect some traffic sound. So, and by the way, there's difference between sound and noise, and noise legally is unwanted sound. So of course, none of us make any of the unwanted sound. We don't make any noise, so we're just sound people here. Let's get into some details. Noise from adjacent rooms, above, below to the side of in other residential areas, from coming from all directions, voices, TV, music, teleconferences, like this one. I'm sure we're not bothering anybody next door, right? They all love this. So that's so we're good. And then impacts are usually directly above. And that says unit because this was, oops, I took that from an apartment or condo presentation, but it works in houses too. There was one guy in a house, nice house in Florida, sort of a development house, but you know, you're talking in the three, four million dollar range. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was not built the way you guys built, but it was pretty lightweight. And so he didn't like his kids jumping around on the second floor in their playroom. Ten years old, 12, whatever, jumping on the, I said, okay, we got a float of floor. And I, you know, designed a floating floor for him. And it had some poor chip creed in there and nice pads that you could get from Michael Crane. And so, you know, and he said, you know what? My structural engineer says that the, the building can't take the weight. I'm like, are you kidding me? I mean, how much did you pay for this place? But okay, so we designed a lighter weight one. But anyway, you know, you had to start from the start with everything, planning this. So here's a, you know, noise from outside. We're talking about transportation, basically roads, aircraft, trains, mechanical systems. That's kind of a little bug-a-boo with noise, you know, you want to, you don't want to hear the AC kicking on. Plumbing, neighborhood activity, if you're in the neighborhood. And the construction around is usually temporary. So, but anything you can think of, there's, there's going to be a sound source. The neighbors, maybe. In a multi-family neighbors are a little more important. But it could be your name, it could be your kids could be your elderly aunt rocking out. So you never know. But here's a little picture of where the sound and noise unwanted sound can come from. All over, you see the, you know, you see plumbing fixtures, music, kids playing. Where's the vacuum cleaner? It's in there somewhere. Maybe it's the next one. Okay, so we have two types of isolation. One is transmitted, which would be, we'll call sound isolation. It either goes through the, the wall panels or the floor panel floor ceiling assembly. And it can be airborne, can be structure born. It'll hit the walls and go sideways, go down. And it could be impact. That's usually vertical adjacencies. Here's a couple of more pictures. There's the bagpiper. I love these old pictures. Somebody's snoring. Yeah. Okay, and now this is more multi-family, but it does show some of the types of sources you can get. Here's washing machines, music, TV. Here's somebody with a trash shoot. So you might have a trash shoot in a big house, I don't know. So what we want to do is kind of when the project starts and we're in the design phase, we're in that before the design phase, we're in the vision phase, we're, you know, programming, we're looking at this thing. And well, what do we want this home to look like? We start to evaluate what the issues. One of the things to do is compare it to standard performance criteria. So I'll give you some of those really quick. A lot of it comes from the building code, IVC in state. Although the IVC, you know, always says it excludes single and double family houses and townhouses. But, you know, if you're in a multi-unit, a high end condo maybe, IVC certainly comes in in your state code. Then we have ASTM standards. We have quality evaluations, basically objective and then ordinance codes. That's your property line right there. Can't bother your neighbor. And then the biggest thing you may have is your occupant or owner expectations. And that's perceived subjective. They feel good about it. And you can actually quantify that stuff. But it's important to get the owner on board early and decide, you know, what they want their home to be like. So that's important. Get started early in the design phase. We can quantify isolation by standardized testing with ASTM. The numbers you've probably heard are STC and IIC, sound transmission class and impact insulation class. So those are ASTM standards. They have them in the lab. And then you can test them in the building as well. And some of the nuts and bolts of that is here's a here's a wall assembly being tested in a lab, which is basically a a big concrete bunker and they leave a hole in the middle, usually eight by 14 that you can build a wall assembly in there. And and blast sound on one side and measure it on the other. And the differences your go through a little math and you get the single number sound transmission class. This one, the code says between units, you have to be 50. That's not too good. You can hear them talking on the other side. But that's the building code and it it is there is a law that you can't build it any worse than that. So, but that's, you know, we go up from there. That's what it looks like in the test. ASTM E90 is the lab test and E336 is that installed test. Here's E336. Here's a loudspeaker making some sounds in the upper room and it goes through. down to the lower room wall different kinds of ways. It goes right through the floor and the ceiling, but it also hits the walls and once you excite the structure, it goes in all directions. And by the way, stick built is probably the worst for this because wood is a wonderful sound transmitter and vibration transmitter. So keep that in mind. When you hear STC numbers, just remember it has limitations, it's a limited frequency range. The single number doesn't tell a whole story. You can kind of compare different construction assemblies, but it can be misleading. Here's a picture show on that. So there's CMU, routed filled CMU, STC 48. And here's a little lightweight gypsum wall board construction, which has a higher STC rating. But if you look, I don't know if you can see my mouse, you see this dip in the kind of the frequency graph. This is a frequency graph, by the way, it goes from low frequency base to the middle to the high crickets. And our speech is right around in the middle here. Well, it turns out that gypsum board has a resonance right in the speech range. So you can get, you know, the way they do the math and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on that, but you can, you take all these frequencies and you put them in the ASTM standard math and you come up with the single number rating. You see, there's a big dip because of the resonance of gypsum board right in the speech range. So you are going to hear people talking on the other side with this lightweight gypsum wall board on studs, steel stud here, compared to the CMUs. So you've got to be kind of careful. You want to look into some of the details of your constructions. Then there's the tapping test. I don't know if you ever saw a tapping machine. It runs on a motor. These little hammers drop on the floor and make that tapping sound. And then you measure downstairs and tells you what's going on in terms of the floor ceiling. Here's somebody putting one in a lab. And here's somebody hammering on the floor over and on the left side, you can see that that has some nice spring spring material underneath from MP global probably. And then this one over and so the D, the sound going through is not so big. But on this side, oh, they forgot to put the stuff down on the floor and it's going everywhere. So something to keep in mind. And that's an AIC. The A is when you test in the field. The new designation for ASTM is apparent. The old one was that met field, but they changed it. So it's some AIC. And 45 is the minimum. They give you five points below the lab or a calculation standard, which is 50 or state code, you know, between units. But in a house, you don't care about that unless you want to have some privacy in your home. So then you might want to think about that. The AIC test isn't all that good because it really doesn't, you know, it's all we have right now. But it doesn't really tell you when you're walking across or you're going to hear, you might hear the high heel clicks, but you won't hear like the weight transfer. And basically, since you're dropping hammers on the floor, anything soft on the floor, you know, hard flooring needs to soak up some energy underneath the flooring. But if you have carpet, it soaks up that hammer right there. So here's a carpet on four inch of concrete slab. And you're getting an AIC of 81, okay. That same four inch slab without flooring is going to give you 47. So just because it's a hard surface that the hammer is dropping on and it, it'll, it'll transmit again all over the building. So the floor materials really important. And if you want to put something hard, which people like on their floors, you need to have some kind of a pad or mat underneath. And Michael tell you all about those. Again, the limited limitation of the single number, it helps compare different assemblies, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It won't, it won't show up, you know, walking is a much slower rate. You can steer out here, people walking even if it's on carpet. And especially enjoys type construction. And it might, you know, test very well with the IIC number, just because of the, the way the hammers at the carpet. But you still hear everything upstairs. So you want to get some weight into your construction. That's important. It'll cost more. The owner doesn't really see it. It's behind the floor. It's behind the walls, but it makes the building a lot nicer in that sense. So, you know, keep that in mind. It will add some cost because, you know, weight comes with cost. And the other thing IIC doesn't do is a gym or dance or, you know, work fitness. There's, there's solutions for that. The biggest thing if you're moving around is to float the floor, like we were talking about with the kids playroom. If you are dropping weights, they actually make pads look up either Titan or rogue fitness. They'll give you pads. You can drop your weights on and it'll stop right there. It doesn't bounce. It just kind of takes up all the weight. So that's a cheaper solution by a far, but floating floors are really nice and you need some weight. Okay, here's if you're in a multi-family, these are coming off of the ICC guidance from 2010. They say code minimum 50 STC 50 IIC, acceptable in quotes 55 and preferred 16. Now everybody knows that if you design to the code minimum, you've got maybe a 50% chance of meeting the code once it's installed. You probably want to design better than that. And, you know, again, talk to your owner, find out what their preferences are, and certain rooms they may want to isolate from other rooms. Here's another way of looking at a quality level from Marshall Long. Good guy. This is for, you know, multi-family. And a lot of you are probably building, you know, we build everything. We build everything from section 8 to multi-meGA. But, you know, the higher quality deserves higher quality. So what does that mean? Well, we raise the numbers. The STC, and this is the old FSTC, it should be A now, but high quality 65. If we're looking for some privacy, and really, you know, you're paying huge bucks for your condo or you want to keep your bedroom private, we're probably looking at 70 STC. And same thing for IIC, because those that tap, tap can be really annoying. So we even bump it up a little more. I'll show you an example of an extreme case in a little while. So the acoustical issues we've identified so far, noise inside the residence. We've got standard criteria for the isolation. And now we want to get to noise criteria rating. That's for, say, mechanical systems. So you, if you're getting a lot of noise from your AC, that means your ductwork is too small. The air is going too fast, you know, blow, blow fastly on your fingers, and it sounds louder than if you just kind of breathe out. So you want bigger ductwork, again, more space, more, you know, it's always the fight between how much space will I take and, you know, can I slow the air down? But this is all defined in ANC S 12.2 and ash ray handbook for you mechanical types. NC ratings. NC is not equivalent to DBA. Just keep that in mind, which is a weighted sound levels. Like typical voice, I'm talking a little louder into my computer, probably 65, 70 DBA. And the NC rating is going to be a little number wise, a little bit less than that. But you have criteria, design criteria for mechanical systems. So make sure your mechanical engineer sees these things. Bedrooms, they go, well, 25 to 30. Lower is better. So you want to keep that in mind. And if you, again, everything in a higher end home should be spring mounted, everything's on springs. All the ductwork is kind of isolated by rubber or mechanical springs. You don't want that stuff shaking, you don't want it, you know, here they go. quunk when it kicks on. So those are all things to think about. Stuff behind the walls that the owner doesn't see. Why am I paying for that? Well, if you want to have a pleasant serene home, that's what we do. It's definitely science for that. So here's some acoustic quality, also speech privacy. This can be quantified. So do you want to have a home office where you want to have conversations that are not heard either inside or both ways. There are numbers that can be applied to that. Confidential is privacy index way up there, almost one. And then under 0.6, you're basically hearing everything they're saying. So you want to get your get your assemblies, floor and ceiling and walls to give you the kind of performance there. If you can have privacy, if you want it. So this is part of the due diligence of the project. You sort of do an evaluation. What do I want? What does the owner want? What can we recommend to them so that they'll be happy? And that comes from experience, but you know that you've got this this science behind it, building science and beers behind it also in the better designs. And so there's objective criteria that we just went over a few. We didn't talk about reverberation, but if you have a large foyer and it's very echoey. So people won't like that. They'll say, "Oh, I bring my guests in." They can't hear anything because it's so echoey. So we have to put absorptive surface materials. Fortunately, it's not just what I would do as an acoustical engineer. If I needed to put absorption in a room, I just could add a home depot and buy all the six-inch pink insulation I can find and staple it on every surface of the walls, the ceiling. Let's see. What's wrong with that? As an engineer is great, as anybody else, it's, well, it looks terrible. The phyramarcial is not happy. It's very itchy. That's not good. So, and by the way, I did install insulation, so I know what I'm talking about. But so there's, fortunately, a lot of materials now, hard-looking, we call it hard-looking materials. Plaster, wood, metal, glass, just about anything you can think of that will absorb sound. So it's an amazing array of materials. And Michael will be talking about that a little bit more. And then you have the subjective criteria. What does the owner think? What does the occupant think? So all these things to think about in your design and your implementation, your installation of these designs. So while we're at it, I guess we got a little more time. A few more minutes. We'll go into some case studies that kind of apply some of these principles. The first one is the overview. Identifies some potential sound quality issues in a proposed project. And we've got some construction noise that is on site that we're trying to keep from the neighbors. That's a property line and neighbor happiness kind of thing. Then we have road traffic noise. We can't shut the road down, but we want to enjoy our backyard. And then finally, a home theater, which kind of pulls all of those things together that we're talking about. So here's a proposed home on an island. Nice looking place. I asked my AV guys to take a look at that and they said, "You sure that's not a resort? No, that's somebody's house. It's going to be." And so it's pretty big and we say, "Okay, what's going on there?" Over here, we've got the main house and over here. This is the, I don't know, they call it a beach club. So we'll see what happens with that. Let's take a look at the architecturals. Okay, first floor. I see a bunch of stuff happening. Hard to read. I don't know if you can read this family room. Goes out to the spa. Here's let me take a look at it real quick. Okay, chef's kitchen. And then they sort of show kitchen. Then we've got the home theater over here. A big staircase. Open two stories. A guest suite back here. All open. All glass. That place is going to sound terrible if they don't do anything about it. The biggest opportunity for absorption will be the ceiling. And then you pick and choose where you can go elsewhere. The theater will be kind of interesting because you want to isolate that when you're listening to Apollo 13 or rocking out in there with hot yoga or something. You know, you want to keep that from the rest of the house because they'll get annoyed with you. Here's the second floor. I don't know if you can read this, but there's a master suite over here and a bunch of bedrooms. Of course, the stairway. I cut off a little bit of it so it would fit on the slide, but it's a big place and it's all open and it's all hard. So sound from one side is going to really travel over to the other side, especially down this big curvy tube of a house. So a lot of things to keep in mind while doing that design and the build out. Okay. How about keeping construction noise on site? So here's a site that's a sandwich between a couple of neighbors and they want to keep the they want to meet the local code and they want to keep the neighbors happy. They want to be friends with them. So we came up with a system where we would put a big sound wall around it during construction. This will be 20 feet high. We looked at 25, but that didn't give bias much more. So there's it's really two stage. Here's a cement mixer and we built kind of like a little hut around it, which we can move around, pick up and move around as the cement mixer moves around. And then, you know, all the other tools that they have, back hose, et cetera, site work. And then the 20 foot wall catches the rest of it. So this is a rendering from a from a drone photo that shows what the piles of material will look like and what the wall will look like. Here's one on the north side, one on the west, and you can't really see the one on the south. But all the calculations show that that all blend in and pretty much be mostly below the background sound from local traffic and and the ocean waves and so on. So so that's keeping the site site construction sound on site. Here's another one. This is somebody who had a busy road in the backyard behind this these trees. So we went out did a bunch of measurements. This is their pool kind of an alcove area dining and so on. That's the short term. That's the sound analyzer on a tripod, you can see. And then there's a we strapped one up here to measure for about a week just to see what it varies over day and night. And then came up with a wall design, which looks like this. So you have you have the traffic going by trucks and autos and motorcycles and heavy trucks like trucks. So the city, you know, we're looking at it and we're trying for let's say about a 15 foot wall. See if they'll approve that. We would not drop down below 12 for sure. Most towns or cities like about a six foot or eight foot max, but you really need that the extra height, especially with the two story house, it bounces off the house. But the city want to know, why do you need these returns? You know, what do you need to put these side pieces? Well, we drew them a picture because, you know, when the trucks approaching from the south, it's it's scooting right back in here, the sound of the little yellow arrows and so same thing for the north. So hopefully we're going to get those side pieces approved. So that's how to make the backyard more pleasant with a happy, with a heavy traffic and make it happy. Okay. Now, okay, so let's tie it all together. We've got home theater design. And this is, I've got a little video to play for you. We've got basically extreme sound isolation, mostly from inside the room to outside the room. I don't think we're as worried about outside the room to inside the mechanical system noise control. You don't want it to be, you know, blasting when you're in the quiet part of the movie. And then the acoustics inside the space so that the the base and the high frequencies are balanced. And the diffusion is like the difference between a frosted white light bulb and a bulb with clear glass. The clear is going to be more had more glary looking, you know, but the frosted one will diffuse the like. And in the same way, we want to diffuse this sound so there aren't any hot spots or dead spots in the room. So I've got a little presentation that we this was this one would work in a single family house this kind of extreme because this was in a condo actually it was a very super high-end development and the developer took a unit and he wanted a home theater inside his unit that wouldn't bother his neighbors so we kind of had to really go what they called the bomb shelter but so here it is and this little video you may have to adjust your sound the music may be a little loud we put this together to show the construction kind of from the you know ground up with it showing all the layers of walls that are separated by air spaces and insulation ceiling that's floated on springs the floor is is floated also on pads very heavy thick pads and then all the stuff that's on the inside to smooth out the sound so enjoy the sound the music might be a little loud we put this together for the owner so that they could get the general idea and we try to keep it down within a minute or so to be within his attention span just kidding just kidding good owner great owner great developer okay so let's go any developers in the house there isn't any sound on my end so yeah just you talking but the visual is entertaining good well you see all the layers of the walls lots of gypsum board specialized gypsum board which might be able to tell you about this thing was set up actually for Dolby Atmos which is like a 13 speaker system which some of the new movies are being mixed in so it's a lot of speakers there's a standard for that Dolby Atmos and we wanted to build to that in the back you see a diffuser they count the fuser there's some on the walls here we're talking about the looking at the ceiling it's got a raked floor so that the seats you know are in rows that don't go higher there's the ceiling on springs so that we don't bother the people upstairs and then get the flanking sound sideways in the concrete slab we got a built basically build a box in a box there's the screen you see the some of the speakers on the sides and the way the seats would between all the absorption all that yellow insulation that you saw up in the up in the ceiling and in the corners smooth out the sound and the diffusers help smooth it out and the box in a box keeps the sound inside so they can play it and watch as much as they want late at night there we go I don't know if you got the music maybe was coming through my mic but there we go so let's see what's next all right so we want to solve these issues as we said earlier start with the highest quality you can in design and construction it will add somewhat to the budget depends on what you do but you can figure you know you get a lot of acoustics for I don't know $100,000 if you're building a couple million dollar home it might be worth it so you know you want to manage the owner expectations take a look at the the pricing look at the estimates see where you can you know you want to do some sound-rated doors maybe in a bedroom area or an office area you know they will cost you a little bit they come in all kinds of materials but you want to first of all as a as a professional as a designer and or a builder you want to minimize your risk exposure to having any issues that you have to do call backs or you know God forbid any renovations after the after the fact so so manage the owner expectations and be aware that you want to reduce the risk exposure for yourself and you want to maximize your return on investment so think that's it what else do we have thank you very much for having me come by this is a pleasure awesome there's definitely lots of questions and since you referenced Michael's products like 16 times in your presentation I think Michael everybody in the audience wants to know how to do it and with what well like Mr. Brooks said there's a lot of different ways and to really get to as much like thermal design my kind of passion and the installation there's a lot of different ways to get the same result it's understanding how things work together that makes the most sense for an assembly design you have choices that start from the training stage especially when we just talk just basic wall assemblies we can do a single stud assembly just a standard two by four or two by six is that's in every house and USA or we can expand it to a two by six plate we can do staggered stud framing we can even do double stud framing so there's decisions that that you can make just on on just the way we frame some frame a wall assembly and then you put it together I've saw a couple of comments on here just double layering your draw wall you know and so I think it's really important to understand what these products do I love the fact that Mr. Brooks brought up that I the where draw wall dips down into that speech factor and how I can do now that's also saw where's my is talking about the difference between half inch and five eighths I prefer five eighths even though it on paper it doesn't look like much but when we look at these ST-STC tests we've got to understand this is an average of transmission loss across 16 different frequencies and so where one may excel and have a better SDC it may depend we may be dealing with a frequency that is on a low end where the one that that tests as well the STC does better and so it's putting all the this information together that makes it good wall assembly in my opinion so is there good standards to to developing a wall assembly yes there is and so but I usually dissect layer the layers of sound control into different sectors and course mass being one of them adding more mass that's adding another layer draw wall dampeners like my products more in the dampener space we are reducing that vibrational energy coming through trying to prevent it from going through to your framing assembly especially when we deal with wood studs and and then you have isolation decoupling your assemblies like a double stud framing method or resilient channel you're trying to isolate those sounds and keep them in a space and then you have you know absorption which is like your insulation your sound panels fabrics on the wall acoustical sealants can be considered an absorption method one that I used to install myself I'll enjoy dealing with acoustical sealants and in fact I had a job that went south because a value engineered my acoustical sealants out of the bit and so that's what you get with being very low value and no engineering so that was actually one of the questions the chat saw you're talking about it and thank you to Jeff and Kurt who have been diligently answering questions in the chat as well which was before the recording for people who aren't going to get the chat is acoustic cock really better than regular cock so acoustic cock is raid like they have to pass a rating test to be considered an acoustical sealant so that's really the difference I loved what forget who which one you've mentioned it but the difference is is a regular cock is going to harden it's going to form more of a bond and then acoustic cock is going to keep flexible so as things expand contract it still moves with the building materials. That's that's right, Mike. It has to say flexible. There is an ASTM standard on that too, C919. And you know, the funny thing you mentioned, VE, a friend of mine tells me it really stands for value extraction. We pull all the value right out. 100%. And so when people want to know about clock, I say, okay, I talk to the I talk to the drywall guys and I say, all right, just think of all the clock that you're ever going to use for the rest of your life and triple it for this project. Because you got to fill all those little holes. That's where the sound goes through. Absolutely. The first audience question is actually from my friend, Bob Morrison, who inspired this show along with a conversation with Michael. A duplex into a high performance duplex. I'm sorry. And the dividing wall is a concern for him. He wants it basically as soundproof as reasonably possible, but he doesn't, doesn't want to go overboard. So just list off his questions. How reliable are the vendors estimates of their assemblies, STC ratings? How can the STC of an unknown assembly be estimated? For example, estimating the effect of added mass loaded vinyl to an insulated staggered stud wall. And what assemblies are good better invest for the STC of multifamily apartment separation walls. You want to take that one, Mike? Well, I'm going to speak to the vendor side since I am a vendor. So I think what we really, it really comes down to how they got that STC rating. Is it done in house? Or did they get a third party tested? Third party testing usually don't lie. It's done in a laboratory setting. Now it is different than the field testing, which could have some different situations that isn't really recorded in a lab setting. But I would say that if it's third party testing, then it's reliable information. That's a great point. I always ask for the lab test if I can get one. They don't always have them because, you know, do us cost money to send things to the lab. Not as much as you'd think. Floors are expensive, but walls aren't that expensive to get tested. So it's worth about 5 grand. Yeah, yeah. And so it's not that bad. To answer the mass question, I would say yes. If you're using the loaded vinyl or another piece of drywall and by way, the specialty drywalls that everybody has now that have the rubber inside, like quiet rock or silent FX, I think is the USG version. And basically what they do is they get rid of that little dip for the speech inside. It's the rubber soaks up that that energy in there. So that helps. But if you double the layers, you're going to pick up somewhere. I would say three to five STC points. If you're on a staggered stud or a double stud where the walls aren't touching each other, you'll go more towards the higher end of that. So if you, you know, let's say you have one layer on each side, then you do two layers on one side and one layer on the other side. You might pick up three. And if you do two layers on both sides, you might pick up five or even close to six. You want to see if you can get some insulation in there, either blow it in or, you know, however you need to, open cell foam or, you know, if you can get blow in some cellulose or something, that helps too. I'm not a big fan of the spray foam inside the cavities. I know a lot of contractors that have had to resort to using spray foam because they haven't issues getting that. But, Jess, you know, like our product, we've done testing on staggered stud assemblies. And it's that isolation between the studs. Yes, your plates are still connected, but the decoupling of those studs from the side to side help a lot in increasing that assembly. And whatever if you can do more on the outside, on both sides, then the better it's going to turn out. And so, absolutely, absolutely. My favorite, I don't know, can I say brand name here as far as insulation? You know, any of the fire safe bats are probably good. I like mineral wool, because it has a little more absorption than fiberglass, a little more expensive. It comes in bats and four pound per cubic foot as the best absorb should. So that'll help you the most. The fire bats are usually about two to an half pounds, but like a rock wall, rock board 40, or similar. We'll give you probably the best. You don't have to go heavier. And, you know, if you go a little lighter, fire safe is okay about two, but you're, you know, half a pound insulation won't soak up as much sound as your heavier insulation. Yeah, I think safe things around that four pound a cubic foot mark. Yeah, I remember correctly. Yeah, so, does that help that answers the question? Yeah, yeah, I hope so. Do we have time for another one? We have a bunch queued up here. Let's see what's a good one. When you guys want to ask one, yeah, I was reading to like, there's lots of interesting ones. Travis, do you have one? Yeah, I feel like a lot of our audience would really like to know, which is better green glue or mass loaded vinyl. I think Allison Vales asked that in the chat. As a yes, one or the other, that's a quick one. And then we also have recommendations, would like to have recommendations for working in existing homes and spaces. Would you lean towards adding materials or changing materials out like wall panels and insulation? So first, each of you answered green glue or mass loaded vinyl? They're different. They do different things. Yes, exactly. Well, then explain please. Okay, so, so mass loaded vinyl is exactly that. It's a mass. It's a barrier. So it's going to be block. It's going to be more rigid, where green glue is a dampener. And so it's a viscule elastic compound that kind of forms a bond between two sheets of drywall. Okay, so if I was trying to solve a problem in a space and let's just assume that I'm operating in reality. So budget is an issue. I have installed both of these products and my recollection was that the green glue was significantly less expensive. Am I still correct about that? Yes. Okay, so that might be the more entry level solution for a step in the right direction, is that fair? Yeah. Okay. That's true. I mean, we've had situations where, you know, we need to build out the demizing wall between two, two high end units. But the bathrooms already been, you know, all that's been poured. So you can't move the toilet out to put another stud row in because the drains there and they're not going to move that. So, so we, you know, use the mass loaded vinyl, even though it's more per square foot than gypsum board, just so we can save that extra half inch. So, so I'll tell you and Travis, when he introred me, he said, so, so what I like most about our product is the practicality of it, the ease of install. And, and so that's what I look at when I look at building materials. Sure, sometimes we have to deal with hard to deal with materials. But if we can get the same results out of a product that is not hard to deal with, it speeds up the process. And that's the one I want to go with. Firstly, for my contractor point of view. Absolutely, Mike. I mean, I got a story for you there with schools. You have to meet a certain STC between classrooms. And it turns out it was a, you know, two layers of sheet rock was the standard assembly. Turns out we ended up going with the quiet rock, which was eight times as much, you know, to buy. But the labor was, you know, in one layer was a lot cheaper than two layers. So they went that basically these, you know, state money, they decided to go with the quiet rock instead of two layers of standard type X. So, I think to continue Travis's question there from the first part was, what do you do if you inherit one of these terrible things, right? Do you start taking apart the materials or do you add more materials to it? Obviously being a condo situation, you may not have a lot of I actually have testing in queue just for the situation because I love retro's so much and Where we just take our product and we put it over existing throw all put a layer on top and see what it does to the performance If it helps if it doesn't I don't know. I just want to know. I'm curious to know what the result's gonna be So that's that's scheduled for later this month. So I think you can get some good results if let's say you put a What a one pound or a two pound mic Loaded vinyl on a wall and then cover it with some sheet rock Good. You're adding a lot of weight You're gonna run up the probably gonna run into is how much flanking are you getting in other words? You're blocking the sound that's going through that wall panel But some of it's hitting the ceiling and then going sideways So there's you know, it's not as much. Maybe it's going through the panel. So we can do things Until you hit that we can do things to offset that In the way that we install at the lab We can put some acoustical clock right there. We cut our cut everything in eighth of an inch shy So it has that flexibility there Exactly, we always spec out an eight to a quarter of gap between the walls and the wall ceiling wall floor And then fill that gap with acoustical basically non-hardening caulk and uh, you know, if you have to try to build more of a box in a box You can drop the ceiling on some soft mounts which come in either neoprene rubber or neoprene and steel spring. So You if and sometimes in some of these situations, it's worth it Uh, and in a retrofit you have to look at that economics and see if it's going to be worth I was gonna say in it. Oh, sorry Travis. Do you have a question? No, please continue. I've got something after I was gonna say in addition one of the other questions uh asked and and you guys get to play with all the fun stuff and and do this and figure this stuff out But a question was whether or not there's any software that simulates your design effectiveness, you know, if you established your goals Yes, there there is Go ahead Mike. What do you guys use? So we use a pro uh software out of New Zealand called ensole. Yeah Ensole's great that they've got the best algorithms uh We've uh, we actually built ours from math Uh, loaded up but now ensole has it all and it's so much easier and it makes nice graphics Um, it doesn't do everything But it does a lot and there's probably some freebies out there that you can get plus there's all sorts of uh Stuff you can get online going even way back into the 1960s and 70s It's called the california book and when you get into some of these older houses and you see the plaster on lat and stuff like that You need the california book to tell you what those STCs are going to do because uh, they don't think they have plaster on lat and ensole. I got to check on that one Uh, no, no they they they have some limited assembly options and ensole But it's a great start and it gets you an idea on how something's going to perform It's how I do my comparative analysis and even though we've got our our stuff In it now It's still limited just because we've got it based off a few tests. We've got some more testing that we do The more we dial down and get more accurate numbers out of the software and so likewise with the product set I'm comparing against like a lot of these so we're talking about the masslet of vinyl the Quadrog and so and and what I found so far out of my thing is it really depends on the assembly design I'm gonna go back to that. It's been on assembly design on how those products perform And so I've seen some that they do better than ours. I've seen some where ours does better than theirs and so Really depends like you said Mike. I agree. Testing is the king or or queen if you will uh of the of the results But that's all done in the lab and you never know how that assembly is going to fit into the rest of the building structure That's that's the that's the mystery part Yeah, great 100% So I was gonna add because there was some talk about acoustical sealants and uh we've had basic on steve basic Popular guy in the building science arena. He did a bunch of the Detail plan green building advisor and uh building science corp. Excuse me. Uh anyway He routinely favors this trim co acoustical sealant which uh, I know Michael is messed with in the past and I Have used but I I hate it because of the extremely difficult cleanup the sort of the stringy Um, it's very unpleasant to have on site and uh, it's unpleasant It's a contractor to install anything that never curious. You can't clean it off of anything like Jake Bruton tells This great story about watching his guys cleaning their arms off and their tools with diesel at the end of the day And you know the carcinogens that go home with those guys is it concerned? So I don't favor that product didn't know you do a bunch of stuff with our from the sashco So I phone to friend I texted Nathan uh Nathan uh for our it was a chemical engineer who happens to be a marketing guy at sashco And I said hey, I'm just curious because Allison bale's asked are there other cocks? Um, what does it I think at Allison said might some cocks not tested for acoustics be just as good because they don't dry out and harden And which ones are they? Uh, now obviously Nathan he's a sashco guy He's gonna tell me that the big stretch is a great product for this and it's highly elastic and all that stuff So uh, this is not a sashco commercial. We have two sound attenuation experts here. What say you gentlemen, uh, Nathan says that cocks that Become hard and brittle would do a better job of transmitting sound, but something that remains supple in alastameric Would be sound deadening is that what your experience is correct? So so and I've had first hand experience using the big stretch in I'm on a sound wall And I like it a lot. We covered our outlet around our outlets with it All the way around the perimeter It really flows out good. It stays stays uh really moist and expands and contracts and so I enjoyed using the big stretch and It may not be rated as a kids would call, but I think they tested it to that That that's that standard that's when Nathan said so that that's consistent I'm I never doubted Nathan, but it's better to have an expert say it than me As long as it's yeah as long as it stays um, um, you know flexible. That's the fence. Yeah, and uh, there's an ASTM committee C-24 committee. I'm on that just because I'm interested in cocks That's a little nerdy thing, but I don't know what those guys know, but um, but there are some standards on it and you know your typical brands are You know sheetrock brand uh usg gd makes one Uh, you know quiet products make one you guys probably make one Mike and now you don't make one so as long as it's um As long as it stays flexible for two reasons one it soaks up the vibrations if it's you know rubbery And the other reason is it won't crack and that believe it or not the sound gets through the cracks Yeah, so it's so I was going to add a third one is the air ceiling Exactly. Well If you're going to get the full rating out of a wall the the room basically has to be airtight Right So your your air changes aren't coming through the cracks in the walls and all the sound your air changes are coming through the air system Right, which is also designed to be quiet, but one thing I I will give a little trade. I mean You know people talk about that one guy we did a we spec'd out of a job And uh, we said you can use the green glue in between the layers of drywall or you know you can use caulking And uh he he wanted to know do I have to have both and I said No, you don't if you want to save on the green glue because they had a pallet of it Um, I said you can take your caulk gun and you can do like s patterns in between you know on top of the lower layer And then put your upper your outer layer or next layer on and the other thing is Always stagger the studs because uh there's the joints because you don't want the uh You don't want the joints one on top of each other So that'll help block more sound so if you have two layers you put one up and then you put the next one up Either staggered or horizontal and vertical. So your uh joints don't line up because you have to you're supposed to caulk All the joints before you put the mud on and tape it Because the mud will crack and let the sound through Though a lot of tricks caulking isn't as easy as you think And the other thing is get the five gallon bucket with the air gun because if you try squeeze in the The the applicator you'll end up looking like pop-eye at the end of the job The Milwaukee M12 handheld is the way to go for cordless tool efficient autos. That's a very very efficient applicator. Excellent. So unfortunately, I'm the bearer of bad news. We went 10 minutes over and I know there are people in the chat who still have burning questions. So we will try to post the questions on green building advisor and encourage both Michael and Bennett to continue the conversation there. So if you've got questions that didn't get answered and maybe we just need them to come back and do a whole nether show on like what do you do inside your media room to make the sound and everybody wanted to know what you put on the ceiling of that snake lick building to make that thing sound better. So unfortunately, there is a acoustical plaster. Look at that. Acoustical plaster. So I appreciate both of you taking the time to come here share your knowledge and expertise. I now think I have more questions than I had before we started and it was absolutely awesome. So thank you for sharing your time. Great to see everybody in the audience. Thank you for joining us and we'll try to follow up with some of your questions on green building advisor. Thanks all. Appreciate you guys. Have a good night.