Re:Dear Architects: Sound Matters
by cmarschner on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @05:02PM
(#10809373)
I guess you should just make sure the sound reduction standard is part of the specs.
The country where I live (Germany) uses a pretty simple rule to reduce the number of court cases for sound protection issues like this - a certain standard is considered "state of the art", and if a developer wants to deviate from it he needs to specify it explicitly in the contract. For residential multi-tenant buildings, state of the art is considered what is specified in class II in DIN norm 4109 appendix 2. that stated a minimum reduction of 55 DB for walls and ceilings under a certain measurement regime, and a maximum level of 25 DB for technical installments in the building, among other things.
I moved into such a building lately, and most of the times (like now) it is dead silent to the point you can listen to the clock ticking. If a baby cries at night in the floor above, it can be audible, but not to the point where one gets woken up. Overall it is a good compromise that is as good or better to the places I lived in previously.
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I'm sure this is all true, but I've also heard that Neubau apartment buildings tend to transmit a lot more noise (I've never lived in one), as compared to Altbau apartments with much thicker walls.
Re:Dear Architects: Sound Matters
by cmarschner on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @06:46PM
(#10809850)
Lived in altbau buildings for 10+ years. It totally depends. In our previous flat the most silent wall was the (modern) drywall to the adjacent apartment. In the one before there were steal beams which transmitted noise if something like a speaker was positioned too close.
The worst buildings are probably the postwar period buildings which were built both cheaply and without the regulatory framework in use today.