Our clients often get asked for tips in regards to passing their sound testing; here are a few tips to help you pass Building regulations Part E:
- Ensure all penetrations are fully sealed where they terminate through floors and they are adequately boxed with acoustic quilt and two layers of plasterboard.
- Avoid the use of lightweight blocks in the inner envelope construction as sound will travel both vertically and horizontally from dwelling to dwelling.
- The use of resilient suspended ceilings will help improve the performance of the floor partition.
- Ensure all support steels/timbers are carefully boxed out where they travel from flat to flat vertically and horizontally.
- Use a high quality resilient acoustic membrane on top of the floor to improve the impact performance of a floor.
- Ensure that you don’t position sockets back to back in acoustic partitions walls.
There are many factors to consider when considering good acoustic design, and they are usually split up into five key factors. If used together or in various combinations they will improve sound insulation properties over a wide range of frequencies. The main factors are:
- Mass
- Isolation
- Absorption
- Resilience
- Stiffness
Another potential problem can also be down to noise flanking transmission, especially in existing buildings where you are planning to convert offices/large houses into flats. Here are just a few of the potential noise flanking areas:
- Structural Steels
- Windows built very close to Internal partitions
- Inner leaf of the external wall
- External wall cavities
- External façade or outer leaf
- Roof structure
If you would like more information on our acoustic services, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@aptsoundtesting.co.uk or call Darren direct on 07775623464.