Acoustic comfort is an inherent part of healthy living

News, 28/11/2019

Noise and vibrations from the surrounding environment can negatively affect the health of apartment building users. Among the most disturbing is the sound of footsteps, which is caused by walking and jumping on the floors of neighboring apartments, common corridors, staircases, etc. The development company JRD therefore decided, in cooperation with the University Center for Energy Efficient Buildings of the Czech Technical University, to optimize the composition of several commonly used floors and to verify their acoustic performance through laboratory tests properties.

Building elements and parts of apartment buildings must be designed and implemented in such a way as to limit the transmission of footfall sound into living rooms at least to the level given by standard values. However, practical experience shows that even in such cases there are complaints about noise, which is manifested by the characteristic "thump" of the floor. The research was therefore focused on improving footfall soundproofing precisely in this frequency range, where, moreover, conventional floating floors tend to be the least effective.

The compositions of the tested floors were designed in cooperation with the companies Cemex and Saint-Gobain Construction Products CZ, ISOVER division. They supply cast leveling layers of foam concrete and spreading layers of anhydrite floors, or sound-insulating mats based on mineral fibers and expanded polystyrene.

Laboratory tests of the Acoustics Laboratory of the Czech Technical University UCEEB have shown that all floor compositions are effective in terms of reducing the transmission of footfall sound and can be used on construction sites to ensure compliance with standard requirements. In some compositions, a significant improvement in footstep soundproofing in the area of low frequencies was also achieved, which is important for the subjective evaluation of sound insulation.

The developer JRD, which is a partner and member of the scientific council of the Czech Technical University UCEEB, is going to use the results of the research and include the best of the tested floor compositions in the basic standard of its energy-saving projects, in order to further increase the acoustic comfort of their users.

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