Building Requirements: Soundproofing

[rjlevins]

The sounds of the city (music, cars, street sweepers, etc.) can be quite annoying for downtown residents, especially at odd hours of the night. It's important for us to establish regulations for developers to ensure that their walls and windows are equipped to block out these noises. With the numerous amount of development that we are seeing downtown, I am interested in ways of improving the quality of these structures.

Does anybody have any good reference materials about the costs of soundproofing buildings for developers and/or successful implementations of soundproofing regulations in urban areas? Any suggestions where I might start looking?

ex. I've heard from a colleague that in Germany, windows and doors are built with superior quality, so the sounds of even busy roads are virtually blocked out completely. I'm definitely going to look into why and how theses doors/windows are different.

Any help on this topic is much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[AvianKeahi]

Does anybody have any good reference materials about the costs of soundproofing buildings for developers and/or successful implementations of soundproofing regulations in urban areas? Any suggestions where I might start looking?

Any help on this topic is much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

In Minneapolis/St.Paul, there has been a highly successful program to retrofit hundreds of houses that are under the flight paths of aircraft approaching the MSP airport. The program has been in place for many years and the primary architectural consultant has been Miller-Dunwiddie. Their website is here: http://www.millerdunwiddie.com/index.html

If you are interested in technical details, contact Craig Lau at Miller-Dunwiddie.