Sound & Noise

Soundly Annoying

Impulse noise, steady-state noise and annoying noise -- you have no control over them outside the home, but in the castle, you are king or queen over your domain. We want what we want and we want home to be quiet.

Room to Room Noise

One drawback to metal air ducting is its sound transmission quality. In the case where adjoining rooms share a duct tee, noise and conversation from one room can transmit to the other through the duct work. I prefer flexible ducting because it natively attenuates sound. For this problem I suggest replacement of metal ducting with flexible ducting. One must remember to upsize the ducting one size over the metal when doing this to overcome additional air flow friction of flexible ducting.

Grill Noise

Turbulent air flow generates noise and all air flow from grills is turbulent. The key to quiet grills is to use properly sized grills and properly sized ducting.

Measuring Noise

Contemporary residential standard is 40 dba maximum A-weighted steady background sound level for simultaneous operation of HVAC, lighting and other building services. The instrument to the right is a typical sound level meter set on 60 dba scale with A-weighting selected.