The other day at work I saw a stack of acoustic cieling panels waiting to be installed. Naturally I looked them over closely. The panels are a 2 piece design; a perforated metal holder (which becomes the visible "tile" when installed) and about an inch thick bat of cellulose fiber inside. The cellulose is soft and flexible, like a fiberglass bat, but denser. Now, when we use soft fiberglass for bass or full frequency absorbtion, we generally compress it to get higher density, so a ridiculous depth won't be required. The need for this compression, in my admittedly limited experience, is one of the trickier parts of building DIY treatments. Why not use cellulose insulation instead? It's very cheap, $6 for a bale (I think 40 square feet, 3 inches thick) at Home Depot. Has any inmate compared the acoustic performance of cellulose to soft fiberglass? My thought was to use it either on top of Armstrong semi rigid fiberglass ceiling panels, or in a cylindrical trap with a less dense layer on top for higher frequencies, like foam rubber. I know there are proven designs using fiberglass (and I've built a couple), but I'd like to avoid working with fiberglass next time.
Follow Ups:
- Re: Cellulose insulation - richardpoor 19:32:09 02/06/06
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- In Reply to: Cellulose insulation posted by GCNewsom on February 5, 2006 at 15:19:40:
Interesting that you should post this when you did. Last week I picked up 10 bales of the cellulose to play with this past weekend. I've made a number of corner bass traps and absorbers with the Owens Corning rigid fiberglass and they have worked extremely well, however, I was thinking about how to extend the lower end of their range without the expense of filling the corner space behind with more rigid fiberglass or batts.
I got turned on to the idea of cellulose by an insulating contractor who is working on two historic buildings I own. I had originally planned to use fiberglass batts in the joist space between floors to reduce sound transmission from one floor to another. The contractor mentioned how packed/blown in cellulose would actually do a better job in reducing sound. In fact he has a little demo that he uses to show customers this. I used his suggestion in one building where fiberglass was installed in some of the joists already. The cellulose seemed to work better.
While I didn't have as much time to play with the idea as I would like, I can tell you that the cellulose does work for bass absorption. Like Jon Rische's "down and dirty" bass traps, which are just rolls of insulation stacked in the corners, stacked bales of cellulose also seem to work quite well. Leaving my corner traps in place (they're 2'x8' and aren't easily moved) I simply stacked 5 bales as close to the corners as possible. The effect was pretty noticable. I also tried a few other positions, which is easy to do with bales.
Based on such limited experience, I can't make any direct comparison or offer good suggestions on how to best use this, but it certainly seems to have some possibilities. My original thought was to use the cellulose as "filler" behind the existing fiberglass bass traps. I have plans to enclose the backs behind the panels (which are currently 3" of 705 backed with 2" of 703) and then stuff them with the compressed cellulose.
Hopefully I can make some time in the next couple of weeks to try this design modification and see what happens. I may also be able to make some coarse measurements with my Radio Shack SPL Meter/Rives Test CD to see if any changes are measurable. Will post what I discover.
- Interesting Question. - johnmil 18:08:16 02/06/06
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- In Reply to: Cellulose insulation posted by GCNewsom on February 5, 2006 at 15:19:40:
I think you would get some interesting responses if you were to
post your question in the Tweaks/DIY asylum. A lot of this type
of activity discussed lately
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