Sound Control and Noise Reduction for Home Interiors
Noise / Sound Transference in the home
For an interior to be harmonious we need to consider all the factors, such as the floor coverings, the walls, the ceiling and treat them as a whole.
While the issue of floor coverings and the sound absorption or reflection will be covered in a future article, generalising, soft floor coverings absorb sound and hard floor coverings such as timber reflect sound.
As this section is concerned with the construction of walls we will demonstrate a number of methods of reducing sound through walls.
Sound as you probably know is a series of vibrations at different speeds. This gives the various pitches. The vibrations in turn vibrate the wall and the sound gets transferred through the wall via this vibration. What we try to do is stop or reduce this vibration.
We can use sound insulation or sound absorption.
The way sound travels is either as
Airborne sound -The sound travelling directly through
the air
Flanking sound - Sound leakage through windows
and doors etc
Impact sound - Sound transmitted by the structure
e.g. footsteps
Sound is measured in decibels however it is referred
to in rating form as STC.
This means
Sound Transmission Class.
STC ratings for walls are as follows:
25 Db represents the normal speech that can be
heard easily
30 Db represents the loud speech that can be heard easily
35 Db represents loud speech that can be heard but not understood
42 Db represents loud speech that can be heard but as a murmur
45 Db represents loud speech but you must strain to hear
48 Db represents loud speech which is barely heard
50 Db represents loud speech that cannot be heard
Sound Absorbtion and Noise Reduction for Home Interiors
