Acoustic Engineering

Your acoustic flooring requirements explained

If you live in an apartment you will need to consider the acoustic requirements of the building before installing a hardwood floor. This means the acceptability of noise transfer between apartments, in this case the floor, primarily into the apartment beneath. There are a few ways noise can travel downwards, and even upwards with a hardwood floor in an apartment. The idea of setting a standard to mitigate noise transferrance, is for the peaceful enjoyment of the surrounding apartment dwellers, and yourself.

You can find out the acoustic requirements for your building from your copy of the building by-laws. Some by-laws on the matter of installing a hardwood floor are rather straightforward, and others are complex. Some by-laws refer to guidelines put down by the BCA, the Building Code of Australia, and others rely on a star rated system, put down by a group of acoustic engineers.

The pricing of your wood flooring project into an apartment is dictated by the complexity of the acoustic requirements, this is why it is important to have your information at hand when you contact us about these matters. The flooring system will be dictated by the type of floor you wish to have, and the acoustic requirements we have in front of us. Usually, but not always, we will need to do an Acoustic test before installation of the selected floor, and after.

This is achieved by contacting us. We work with an acoustic engineer, setting up a test bed in the apartment, to assertain the situation with noise transferrance. This test bed will give us an indication of the sound transferrance situation in the apartment using different baffling methods, and we can then proceed to do the installation, refering to the initial test to be indicitive of the final acoustic result.

If your building refers to the BCA standard, we can usually proceed with one type of straightforward acoustic system, contact us for more information about it.  If your building refers to a star rating, we will need to consider a more comprehensive approach which will invariably require a number of layers of baffling and wood, bringing the system height of the floor up considerably.

We look forward to hearing from you.