Door locks that dont go inside the door

http://www.easylocks.co.uk/yale-81-roller-bolt-nightlatch?gclid=CJ200KyZsccCFdHItAodJeADlw

Any good?

Mr. HandyAndy - Really

 

Handy, read the original post. He doesn't want any holes through the door. That yale lock you link to will clearly have a hole right through the door that any drumming sounds will just leak through (causing annoyance to passersby and neighbours alike) Council will be down on him like a ton of bricks at the first drum beat.
What the OP wants is some sort of electronic system, whereby the keypad/lock insert is remote from the door (mounted on the wall or external door frame) and the lock is completely on the inside of the door (I'm sure there are such beasts out there)

 

What type of door/doors do you have James?

I've built rehearsal rooms and although I can understand why you don't want to put any extra holes in your door, you also need to consider making sure the door fits snugly in the frame and holds tightly against any seals you intend to fit. This requires a decent latch.

Are you building a room within a room?

 

Probably achievable with good quality door closers. That's if you have left space to fit them. But with all that expensive kit, a lockable room is more or less essential, I would have thought. But then your average thief doesn't come with his own roadie.

Also you will need a good airflow, otherwise within minutes of walloping those drums you will simply expire mid drum roll. The air intake will let out a good deal of sound, and a lot of the resonant lower frequencies will still travel beyond the room, unless you are building a bunker worthy of withstanding a missile.

 

Just been thinking again. (Dangerous). But if you are not drumming, there's no noise so the door can be locked from the outside.
If you are drumming you could simply have a pair of barrel bolts on the inside.
A simple mortice lock, with a key hole only on the outside, would do the job?

 

Are you building it on a floating floor? This will be the deal maker

 

Fair enough...you could put 25mm of celotex on top of the concrete and build off that...wouldn't add too much to the build. Anything you can do to de-couple will have a positive effect.

 

Sorry to go on, but what's got me bugged is the seemingly illogical nature of the problem. If the lock is on the outside of the door, you cant operate it from the inside, and you might also get locked in if a visitor doesn't set it right when leaving. So you really can't risk something like that happening. If the lock is on the inside you will have to stop drumming to let folk in.

Also I expect the door and its fitting will have more sound insulating challenges than the amount of noise seeping through the keyhole. You may have to make a special door.

There are cabinet type catches and such, but I expect you might find something like a van rear door surface mount lock the nearest thing to what could be used.

 

I would look at magnetic latches with a simple push button either side of the door to switch it off to allow the door to open. If you want to lock them at night all you need is a keyswitch that would put a closed contact in parallel with the external switch, which you take the key away with you.

 

From what I understand about studio noise reduction is that the preferred method of reducing noise is to create a airlock whereby you go through 2 doors to gain access to the studio.
The distance between the two doors will depend on the level of noise either side of the doors. By creating a airlock, you don't have to fit a lock on the inner door if you don't want to , just the outer one.

These are just my thoughts, I hope this helps

 

Thats what I thought when they talk about a room within a room. The doors operate an air lock system. A Yale lock casing will cover the cylinder hole which will muffle the sound on the outer door.

 

2 doors is the way...I've built 2 rooms like this. My original comments were based on 'not worrying too much about bleed from the keyhole, although everything you can do helps, but making sure the general design is 'sound' It's easy to chuck a lot of money at making a 'sound proof' room, only to discover it does not perform as one hoped. Decoupling from the building and adding mass to prevent low frequency propagation is important.

 

Put ply on top of the celotex and build of that. You can also use rock wool slabs. the idea is to isolate your inner room from the outer. Floating the room is a bit like a car suspension at work. If you build your inner room directly off the same floor as your outer, then you will still get a lot of vibrational energy pass straight through your inner to your outer. You will get some attenuation but now where near as much. A half way house would be to put rock wool slabs on the floor after building your walls and put ply on that, making sure the ply doesn't come into contact with your walls.

A lot though depends on budget and your neighbours. I don't know how close they are or whether its more of a case of keeping people in the same building happy. I know someone who had a v drums setup to practice on, in a detached house. The only thing was the side passages shared a common flat roof. The neighbours eventually complained even though you can practice v drums on headphones (bought to keep the neighbours sweet) but it was simply the mechanical thud/vibration of the kick drum pedal that travelled down through the floor and through the side passage!