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Make Sure Peace and Quiet Are Included in Your New Home

by Dudek

After months of looking, you have found the perfect new home. The price is right, the layout is spacious, and the commute to work is easy. What you see looks great. But what you hear – or don’t hear – could make the difference after you move in.

Getting an approximate idea of the noise - or lack of it – where your home is located can be accomplished by looking for a few things and asking a few questions, said Mark Forster of Dudek, an Encinitas environmental consulting firm that provides acoustical consulting services to new home builders.

"The builders we work with are increasingly aware that managing noise makes their new homes much more appealing to buyers," Forster said.

While Dudek’s acousticians employ sophisticated instruments and techniques to measure and analyze noise for new homebuilders Forster offered some easy tips for the new home shopper.

• Have a companion go to the upstairs rooms (or adjacent rooms in single level layouts) to run simple tests -- turn on a radio at various volumes; flush toilets; walk along the floors and turn on bath and sink taps. Plumbing noise can be an issue when pipes are too small or transmit vibrations to the walls.
• In a two-story house, see if compatible second-floor rooms are stacked above the first floor rooms to minimize occasions for noise. For example, a second-floor bedroom directly over the family room where the big screen with surround sound is located may cause some noise issues.
• Check the windows for single or dual panes. Dual panes absorb more sound. Thicker panes and wider air gap between the panes will increase sound reduction.
• Expect to find hollow doors on the interior; swapping them out for solid-core doors will help reduce interior noise.

"Some key issues won’t be visible because they are between the walls and below the floor," Forster said. Prospective buyers can ask the following questions:

• Are interior walls "double walls"? Two rather than one 2 x 4 stud walls are used to absorb more noise by creating an air gap and separating the walls.
• How many layers of drywall are on each side? Two layers absorb more noise.
• Do the walls and ceilings use resilient metal channels? These inserts act as shock absorbers to reduce sound and vibrations from passing through the wall or ceiling.
• Does the floor have a lightweight concrete layer on top? This adds more mass to the floor to reduce the transmission of airborne noise and impact noise of people walking, even on a carpeted floor.
• What is the Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating for walls and floor-ceiling construction? California and the Uniform Building Code require a minimum rating of 50. STC ratings are like earthquake magnitudes – the increase geometrically so a 60 STC rating indicates considerably better noise reduction than 50. A 65 STC rating indicates very high quality in terms of noise reduction, he said.