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P. 51
Bonnie Schnitta
Postal:
SoundSense LLC 39 Industrial Road, Unit 6 P.O. Box 1360 Wainscott, New York 11975 USA
Email:
bonnie@soundsense.com
Residential Quietude,
the Top Luxury Requirement
The acoustic requirements and laws and the secrets to meeting them for single and multifamily residences.
Introduction
Residential acoustic treatments, whether related to privacy or creating the optimal audio experience in a home theater, are no longer just a niche design element. Roy Furchgott in a New York Times article (2015; see http://goo.gl/7P4Ta8) iden- tified residential acoustic treatment a top luxury item for a new residence. Resi- dential acoustic treatments are also a legal requirement as defined by local noise and building codes and the Warranty of Habitability, such as in the New York Real Property Law §235-b. In fact, in 2007, New York City passed a new noise code that has won several independent awards including the National Hearing Conserva- tion Association 2010 Safe-in-Sound Award. Charles Shamoon of the New York Department of Environmental Protection provided the plenary session paper at Inter-Noise 2012 to explain the code and how builders should comply with it (Thalheiner and Shamoon, 2012; see https://acousticstoday.org/plenaryShamoon). All single-family, multifamily, and mixed use properties must consider the pa- rameters in which they are allowed to exist while also meeting the personal and budgetary needs of the inhabitants. “Quietude” is defined as the optimal acoustic environment and should be the end goal when designing any residential space. It is one of my favorite words. Although the most common demand for residential acoustic treatment is related to issues of disrupted sleep, numerous studies also show the negative effect of noise on an individual’s health.
Research has used diverse case studies to illustrate how critical the need is for all environments to improve the quality of life.
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volume 12, issue 3 | Fall 2016 | Acoustics Today | 49
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Numerous studies have demonstrated the adverse affect of noise in a classroom and with the child’s reading scores (e.g., Bronzaft, 2004).
Hospital acoustics and the importance of quietude in recovery have had numer- ous studies that have identified the connection between less disruptive noise and a faster recovery time. One of my favorite papers, as much for its content as for its title alone, is In Defense of Sleep (Solet, 2011). Hospital acoustic studies have also focused on the importance of speech intelligibility (Ryherd, 2013), demonstrating the obvious importance of speech intelligibility in hospitals, es- pecially in emergency and operating rooms.
Individuals with autism suffer from extreme sensitivity to noise. This is also true for children and adults with ADHD. Improved learning, behavior, and well-being occur when placed in an acoustically appropriate environment (Jo- hansson and Lindegren, 2008).
Cancer patients or those with thyroid disorders also have been found to become extremely noise sensitive. Typically, they are disturbed by low-frequency noises or vibrations. Through all the years that I have been doing residential acoustics, I found that when solving noise and vibration problems that were not audible or bothersome to others, it was often in a population of people that had been or were soon to be diagnosed with cancer or a thyroid problem. I presented these
