Isolation in occupied buildings

The lease matters more than the room

People choose a space for its dimensions and its rent, then ask whether it can become a studio. The order should be reversed. A tall room with a light floor above a flat is a harder project than a small room in a basement with a concrete slab. Two days of measurement before signing tells you which one you are looking at, and it costs a fraction of a month's rent.

Isolation is lost at the junctions

Walls, floors and ceilings are usually built correctly. What gets improvised is where they meet, plus every penetration: sockets, ventilation, cable routes, door frames. That is where isolation escapes, and it is why our drawings detail junctions at a scale contractors sometimes find excessive. It is the difference between the figure on paper and the one measured at handover.