Building a Home Theater using Green Glue or Mass loaded vinyl

It’s kind of nice being in the “do it yourself type of business” like soundproofing. In today’s world taking the family out on a Friday night for dinner and a movie might charge you more than your monthly mortgage defrayal. That’s why lots of families are choosing for their very own home Theater. If you have an extra room or an empty space in your basement or upper floor, you have a probable Home Theater.

It used to be that the greatest way to construct a home theater or a home studio was to build new wall within the existing room and then build what we call a “Room inside a room.” Though this way of soundproofing is still fairly effective, it is expensive and eats up lots of wall space in your already cramped theater room.

A better plan is to work with your existing walls by applying a new coating of wallboard to the existing walls and roof but applying a layer of a manufactured goods called Green Glue on the new wallboard and sandwich it in between the existing wall and the new wallboard. If you do this to all the walls and the roof you are well on your way to a great soundproof home theater. Now if your home theater is on a second floor, the ceiling now becomes less of a concern and now the floors become more of an issue. Floors can be soundproofed in many different ways depending on what the finished floor is going to be installed. If you are preparation on having carpet and pad for the finished-floor in your theater, then a soundproof floor underlay would be in order. Something like American Impact less soundproof floor underlay or American Impact Standard underlay. These are both recycled rubber products that would lie atop of the wood or concrete sub floor to prevent the airborne sounds of the home theater from roaming down to the people below.

The Impact less is a less dense rubber underlay and would be great for under carpet and pad. The American Impact Standard would also be effectual under the carpet and pad, but is more suitable for hardwood and ceramic tile floors due to its sheer mass.

More concerns that you might have with your home theater would be doors and windows. Let’s talk about doors for a minute; if you are trying to keep the movie in the home theater, then a hollow core door could be your nastiest enemy. Newest bedroom doors are hollow core and do slight in the way of soundproofing. Your greatest bet would be to go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and buys a solid core MDF or solid wood door. You could ad an automatic drop down casement seal to the bottom of the door and also a door perimeter seal kit to seals around the door where it closes into the jam. A real soundproof door could price thousands, with a little time and careful arrangement; you can obtain the same results at ¼ the price.

The last thing we want to talk about are the windows in your home theater. If neighbors are an anxiety, then I would advise building window plugs with the 2” America Mat closed cell vinyl nit rile foam mat. For instance, if your window were 3’ X 3’, you would cut the foam to 3’1” X 3’ 1” thus giving the window plug and additional ½” around it is complete perimeter. This additional ½” will help to grasp the window plug tightly into the window frame much like a stopper in a bottle. If the window is 4’ or more on either measurement, it is recommended that the window plug be glued to a backer board, something like wood paneling or Luaan. These wood panels can be found at home Depot or Lowe’s.