Noise control in NYC apartments

[LarryC]

This is a thorough New York Times article on dealing with sound and noise issues in New York City apartment buildings.  Obviously, high-end renovations are elaborate end stratospherically expensive, like the $3.5 million renovation of a penthouse whose management proclaimed the noise problems to be irreparable.  The fixes are very interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-for-new-york-noise.html?_r=0

 

The article discusses airborne vs structural vibration issues and solutions.  There is a growing noise-control industry and sales of NC materials is growing rapidly.  One expert estimated that the added  cost of soundproofing in an entirely gutted space, was about 2.5%.  Some of the prices and costs mentioned in the article for renovation looked like a whole lot more than that, often in 6 figures.  Well, after all, it is New York.

Edited December 15, 2015 by LarryC

[WMcD]

Very interesting, Larry.

It seems to me that part of their problems arise from the original construction with sheetrock walls and not so dense floors. If you have the penthouse there can be a lot of equipment up there next to you.

I live in a condo building made of poured concrete. There is a six-in slab below and above me. There are concrete shear walls on either side. I've not heard anything though them.

There are window unit HVAC so there are no shared ducts for heat.

OTOH, there is a building-wide vent in the kitchen. That transmits some voices and the microwave hum from somewhere and a beagle someplace.

.

The door to the hall does not have a good seal at all and I do hear people in the hall.

I don't crank the sound though.

WMcD

[Arrow#422]

Warning:  don't let your NOSE run, nor let your NOISE creep.

Be considerate & conscientious. 

[LarryC]

Very interesting, Larry. It seems to me that part of their problems arise from the original construction with sheetrock walls and not so dense floors. If you have the penthouse there can be a lot of equipment up there next to you. I live in a condo building made of poured concrete. There is a six-in slab below and above me. There are concrete shear walls on either side. I've not heard anything though them.

I would guess some of that construction reaches back to the 19th century, and not much acoustics knowledge or expertise either.  Do you think that vintage of construction was sheetrock, or plaster?  At any rate, airborne and structural sound transmission might have been very poorly prevented, even in very costly apts.

 

Concrete is pretty effective in sound control!

Edited December 15, 2015 by LarryC

[WMcD]

BTW, always good to hear from you Larry.

 

I see that sheetrock was invented at the turn of the century.  But I'll guess it was most popular after WW-II.

 

As far as "vintage" I'll hazard a guess that before the high rise, many apartments (low rise) were wet walls.  That is a fantastic process of applying several layers of plaster over lath strips where were the thickness of yard sticks.  You probably wind up with 1.5 inches of plaster. But now the solution is double up 0.75 inch sheet rock.

 

I'll recall a joke by a comedian which might be referring to NYC.  "My grandparents lived in a ghetto.  My parents lived in an apartment.  I live in a co-op [condo].  They're all the same building."  This just shows how long buildings in NYC survive. Maybe from the turn of the century.

 

Rent control may have something to do with longevity too.  During college spring breaks I worked for a very nice man who sold air conditioners in the north of Manhattan.  A buddy and I would haul a.c. units up four flights of stairs.  The apartments had been in the family of the dwellers for generations apparently to take advantage of rent control laws.

 

One funny story OT.  My buddy had the job from the previous year.  He knew that a window A.C. unit has a heavy side where the compressor is located.  He would pick up the light side as we started and me, not realizing this, picked up the heavy side.  After I complained a few times that "these things are heavy" he fessed up. My buddy was a great guy, so I had to forgive him.

 

WMcD

[WMcD]

Okay, room for one last OT story from my A.C. days.

 

You probably have seen A.C. units hanging out of windows at heights.  And you have to wonder how anyone could hold these heavy beasts in position to attach the unit to the window frame and put in the chains and braces. 

 

The secret is that many A.C. units can be removed from their sheet metal outer housings.  So you do that, put the light weight housing in position, and attach the housing to the window frame and put in chains and braces as needed. Then, with a good amount of muscle, slide in the heavy guts of the A.C. unit into the housing.  Neat!

 

The story goes that the partner, Mr. Smith, of the afore mentioned very nice man did this.  But the window frame was rotten or something and the whole unit fell away to the ground when he slipped in the heavy chassis.

 

Smith put his head out the void and saw that he had been working above a school yard and a kid, apparently, was under the smashed A.C. unit.

 

Smith immediately barfed violently.

 

So now there was a dead kid, the smashed A.C. unit, and lots of barf, on the ground.

 

Very fortunately, the kids had taken off their jackets to run around and play. So what he saw was not a kid, only a kid's jacket.

 

I don't know if the story is true.  But you can't make up these things.

 

WMcD

Edited December 15, 2015 by William F. Gil McDermott

[boom3]

If I may branch on to this, in New Orleans we have people moving into to gentrified neighborhoods "because they love the funky vibe and you can walk to music clubs". The first time they turn off the A/C (mostly window units) they hear and feel the "funky vibes" inside their pricey dwellings. So they complain and call their lawyers.

 

The other side of the coin is that some of these music clubs used to be neighborhood bars where the loudest events were Saints games on the TV. But every venue wants live music now. And then, the brass bands staffed by kids decided to play where the tourists are, so they congregate on street corners and and blow for hours, drowning out most other music or making the clubs crank up the PA in loudness wars. 

 

I'm glad I live in the burbs where a siren still makes people pop out of their houses to see what's happening.