When designing and constructing multi-family dwellings, great care must be taken to ensure noise and vibration isolation is achieved between units. Using industry standards, most condominium structures can easily attain the minimum isolation requirements set by International Building Code.
Last summer, while researching an acoustic levitation device supposedly invented in the early-1600s, my youngest son and I were invited for a personal tour of Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories in Geneva, Ill.
The just-released, version 4.1 of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Building Design and Construction guidelines makes achieving those LEED credits much more practical and rewarding.
It is to be expected that variations in the field will account for drop in performance from those measured in a laboratory, significantly worse performance can typically be traced to a failure to follow three simple checks.