Acoustic Design for Building Envelopes - Are you listening?

Sound & noise are one of the most important senses that we have, providing signals and communication to us as individuals. These sounds grab our attention in different ways, some can be informative and important and others an irritation.

MRC's experience in acoustic design of building envelope solutions goes back over 20 years, in providing building envelope systems that structurally, thermally and acoustically achieve the highest standards in the world.

There are 3 different forms of acoustic influence that impact on the design of building envelope solutions:-

1. Rain Drumming - We are most familiar with this as we stand in a metal skin building and if not treated we hear the rain drops hitting the metal roof system and forms a drumming noise, in some cases for some schools in the Western Cape they can lose over 25 days per annum for teaching.

2. Weighted sound reduction - We are less familiar with this term, this is the ability of a building envelope to reduce the outside noise before it enters the inside of the building or vice versa. Example a highway normally generates between 60 - 80 dB of noise, if a building is located near this highway the noise within the building could be very distracting.

3. Acoustic Reverberation - Describes the sound which bounces around, or reverberates within a building or a space that causes echoes.

Are we listening?

All of the above has a large impact of the inside of the building and design of building envelopes need to consider such issues.

Example of a school or educational establishment near a highway or in a city.

It is a proven fact that children best learn under certain thermal, air ventilation and acoustic conditions - very few schools in South Africa achieve these recommended conditions.

• The room temperature is best between 22 - 25°C or 71 - 77oF
• The natural ventilation - The acceptable value is 2,000ppm of average carbon dioxide in the classroom over a 20 minute period.
• The correct noise level within a teaching block should be between 30 - 40 dB.

MRC's Building Envelope Systems achieve all of the above.

1. MRC's metal built up roof & cladding system is thermally efficient and will deliver a room temperature of between 22 - 25°C or 71 - 77oF.

2. MRC's metal built up roof system will reduce the noise from outside to inside the educational space by a minimum of 40 dB, therefore in the above example i.e near a highway the noise will be reduced to 30 - 40 dB, within the recommended requirements.

3. MRC's Passivent ventilation systems can be incorporated into all building envelope design to provide the correct airflow to remove the 'stale air.'

4. MRC's 'cool roof' coating used in conjunction with our Green roof system will achieve the weighted sound reduction of 40 dB and also reduce the temperature with the educational space.

MRC's market leading approach to educational solutions provides specifiers real choice in specifying the best solutions for the the optimum environment to educate our children.

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