Free guide for your room
Build panels and a drum screen
Two Saturday builds for a team lead: absorbent panels for the back wall, and a drum screen. Less echo and a quieter stage leave less to fight at the desk on Sunday. Read the fire safety part before anyone buys anything.
Panels for the back wall
A few panels on the back wall stop the late echo that comes back to the stage and the front rows and blurs the words. They won't make a big, echoey hall quiet. That takes far more panels, or a room acoustics expert and a budget, so start with the back wall and listen again.
Make a pine frame about 124 × 64 cm, and fill it with 10 cm of glass wool or rock wool: two 5 cm batts, not squashed.
Swipe the drawing sideways to see all of it.
Thickness matters most: a thin panel leaves a room duller but still boomy. The air gap behind a panel helps it reach lower still.
Swipe the drawing sideways to see all of it.
Where they go first
- The middle of the back wall, where the main speakers point, from head height up: six to eight panels. Then clap again, and add more if the echo is still there.
- The side walls, where someone sitting in the middle seats sees a main speaker in a mirror slid along the wall.
- Two bare walls that flutter when you clap between them: one panel on each, staggered.
- Behind the drummer, if you have a screen.
Set up every week? Ask the hall's owner in writing whether panels may stay. If not, aim the speakers away from bare walls, and use two panels hinged as a free-standing screen behind the band, with wide feet and tied to something solid, never in a walkway.
A drum screen that helps
Try the cheaper fixes first: in-ears instead of wedges, a drummer who plays to the room, and lighter sticks or rods for quieter songs. In a small room, an electronic kit is often the better answer. A screen is for when the front rows still hear the drums loudly with the drum mics turned right down.
A clear screen stops the cymbals and the snare's crack reaching the front rows. The kick and the low notes go round it, and what it stops is sent back at the drummer. So a screen needs absorbent panels on the wall behind the drummer, and the drummer needs well-sealed in-ears or musicians' earplugs. Read a sound level meter at the drummer's head in a loud song, and plan rehearsals with your team's allowance: 85 dBA averaged over eight hours, and every 3 dB more halves the time.
Swipe the drawing sideways to see all of it.
Volunteers can build a simple screen: five hinged modules, each a padded base 60 cm tall with a 6 mm clear acrylic sheet (120 × 60 cm, a stock size) on top, about 1.8 m in all. Stand it 20 to 40 cm from the kit, leave a small gap at one hinge for the cables, and leave the top open. Measure the front rows before and after, with the drum mics down: no screen promises a number.
A closed drum booth is rarely worth it for a church. It's hot, heavy and costly, and it cuts the drummer off from the band. Think about one only when a screen with panels behind it is in place and measured, the front rows are still over your target, and the church wants an acoustic kit, not an electronic one. Then it needs a lid, fresh air, absorption, in-ears and a talkback mic: a job for a professional.
Fire safety first
Safety Only materials that don't burn, and fabric with a certificate. A church is a public building, and South Africa's building regulations (SANS 10400 Part T) limit what may burn on its walls. Glass wool and rock wool count as non-combustible; foam, polyester insulation, egg boxes, carpet and untreated fabric don't. A fabric-covered panel is likely to be treated as a wall finish, so the fabric needs a fire test certificate your fire officer accepts.
Safety Keep every way out clear. Never put a panel in a passage, a foyer that leads to an exit or any escape route, or over an exit, an exit sign, an extinguisher, a hose reel, an alarm button, a smoke detector, a sprinkler, a light, a heater or the electrical board. Blocking an escape route is an offence under the building regulations.
Distrust labels like "fire retardant", or a bare "B1" or "M1", printed on foam or fabric: on their own they don't show it passed a South African test. Ask for the test report: the standard, the lab, the date and the exact product. In 2003, foam lining a stage in a nightclub in the United States caught fire from a band's fireworks, and 100 people died (the US government's investigation, NIST). That's why foam never goes on a church wall.
The rules change: the current edition of Part T is from 2024, and each municipality has its own fire by-law. So we don't quote fire classes here. Your fire officer tells you what your building needs.
Before you build: ask four people
- Your leaders: permission, the budget, and who owns the job.
- The building's owner or landlord: written permission to fix to the walls, and who takes them down if you leave. A school hall's rules can be stricter than a church's.
- Your municipality's fire safety office: "We want to hang fabric-covered glass wool panels on the back wall of our church. Which fire class does the fabric need, and do you need to see anything before or after?"
- Your insurer: tell them in writing before you start.
Then keep a record in your desk guide: the products, their fire classes or certificates, photos, the date, and who built and hung them.
Handling the wool, and fixing it up
Safety Wool and fixings. Wear a dust mask (FFP2), gloves, safety glasses and long sleeves to handle the wool, cut it with a knife rather than a power saw, bag the offcuts, and vacuum rather than sweep. Build outside or with the windows open, away from where children play. Fix panels into brick or concrete with plugs, never into ceiling board or with tape. Anything above seats or a walkway gets a second, separate fixing, and a ceiling panel is a job for a qualified installer. Use an A-frame ladder or a scaffold tower, two people for every lift, nobody underneath.
What not to do
- Egg boxes, foam, mattresses or carpet on the walls: they burn, and they only touch the highs.
- Insulation with foil or plastic facing the room: it reflects the highs.
- Washing panel fabric, unless its maker says the fibre itself is flame-retardant: washing can remove a treatment.
- Sealing the drummer in, or putting a lid on a screen you build.
- Glass, or thin acrylic or roofing sheets that buzz and bow, for a screen.
- Panels or screens near heaters, gas heaters or fireplaces.
Prices, with the date we checked them
What the parts cost, read on each shop's own website on the date shown, rounded to the nearest rand. Prices and stock change. Shops in other towns, and local timber and insulation suppliers, are worth a phone call too.
Outside Gauteng? Leroy Merlin's glass wool and its 19 × 44 mm strips are for delivery or collection in Gauteng only, so someone collects them from a Gauteng store, or you buy the wool nearer home.
Prices checked on 14 October 2026, at South African shops, in rand, with VAT unless a row says otherwise. Check again before you buy.
| What | Why | Price | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pine plank, 19 × 102 mm, 3 m long | The frame, the back strips and the cleats: two planks a panel, and one more for every four panels' cleats. The drum screen's five bases take four. | R59 | Leroy MerlinOutside Gauteng too: the fee depends on your town (R95 to Potchefstroom when we checked)Checked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Glass wool batts, 51 mm, 1200 × 600 mm, 40 in a pack | The panel's core: two batts a panel, so one pack makes 20 panels. Listed as non-combustible on the insulation industry's fire register (September 2024). | R2 295 | Leroy MerlinGauteng only, delivered or collectedChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Glass wool roll, 100 mm, 7.2 m² | A cheaper core: cut it to 120 × 60 cm, about ten panels a roll. It's soft, so staple garden netting or wire mesh across the back. Listed as non-combustible on the same register. | R549 | Leroy MerlinGauteng only, delivered or collectedChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Glass wool roll, 100 mm, 6 × 1.2 m | The same kind of roll, from a chain with stores across the country: worth asking if a Gauteng store is too far. Its price shows only once you choose a store on its site. | Ask the shop | BuildersFrom its stores: ask your nearestChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| FFP2 dust masks, 5 in a pack | For everyone who handles the wool, with gloves, safety glasses and long sleeves. | R80 | Leroy MerlinOutside Gauteng too: the fee depends on your town (R95 to Potchefstroom when we checked)Checked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Clear acrylic sheet, 6 mm, 1200 × 600 mm | The drum screen's clear top: one a module, five in all. A stock size, so nothing to cut. | R901 | Maizey CraftBy courier (the fee shows at checkout), or collect in Pretoria WestChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Clear acrylic sheet, 5 mm, 1200 × 600 mm | Cheaper, but a screen maker recommends 6 mm for a church stage. | R789 | Maizey CraftBy courier (the fee shows at checkout), or collect in Pretoria WestChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Pine strip, 19 × 44 mm, 3 m long | The clamp strips that hold each clear sheet: two strips do all five modules. Or ask a timber counter to cut a 19 × 102 plank in two. | R93 | Leroy MerlinGauteng only, delivered or collectedChecked 14 Oct 2026 |
| Flame-retardant cotton twill, 150 cm wide, per metre | Flame-retardant, with test reports and certificates on request. It's heavy workwear cloth, so do the breath test on a sample before you buy more. | R170The shop doesn't say whether this includes VAT | Ragland FabricsAnywhere in South Africa: R195, free over R2 500Checked 14 Oct 2026 |
Not in the table. The best cover for a panel is a breathable fabric that is flame-retardant in the fibre itself: sound passes through it, and washing can't remove its fire resistance. We haven't found a South African price yet, so ask a theatre or contract fabric supplier for a quote and the fire test certificate. The fixings (hinges, M5 bolts and washers, rubber draught strip, wood screws, wall plugs, staples, and mirror clips or small angle brackets) come from any hardware store. We haven't priced them, as they vary by store.
For one panel: two planks, two batts (or a tenth of a roll) and about 1.6 m of fabric 1.5 m wide, plus one plank for every four panels' cleats. For a screen: five clear sheets, four planks, two strips, five batts and two feet (offcuts from the panels' planks, or one more plank), and two panels for the wall behind the drummer.
The steps, on one page each
Sanctuary Mix has two printables for these builds: Build a panel (the cut list, the tools, eight steps and the four people to ask) and Plan a drum screen (what to measure, what you need, eight steps and the drummer's ears). Chapter 10 explains the why. In the training, Level 3 lessons 1 and 2 teach both.
Also free
- How loud is too loud?: a one-page volume guide for your pastor.
- In-ears: the band's guide: a one-page sheet for musicians on in-ears.
- Plan your stage: put your team on the stage, and the channel list writes itself.