Building Business and Strategic Alliances
"Every time we work with Charles Roy and his associates, it's been very successful," says Bob Gulomb. "I'm so happy with their work I want them to help in the planning of a new building so we can avoid potential problems."
Bob Gulomb, a Manager of Facilities Engineering with Bayer, called CCR ASSOCIATES LLC to help with an acoustical problem that had developed in the interior space of a new building that Bayer had moved into a year earlier. Gulomb was concerned about the noise level in the open plan office space occupied by a group of 125 people.
"People talking in the work area combined with the computer keyboards, got worse and worse until you couldn't focus anymore," says Gulomb. "It was like a slot machine drone." CCR's analysis was that the sounds were hitting the glass walls of the outer offices and bouncing them back into the open office space, even when the doors were closed.
"CCR installed an electric sound masking system to help cover up the background noises of speech and office machinery," says Gulomb, who turned to CCR again to solve another problem: the deafening noise in a conference room and the office space beneath it. This time CCR brought in staff engineering consultant, Bonnie Schnitta, Ph.D., whose specialty is in vibration and noise control.
"The problem at Bayer was a very common one that many people don't realize can be solved," Schnitta says, noting that the culprit was a noisy HVAC system which made it impossible to understand speech within the conference room.
"When the equipment noise is transferred into the ductwork, it becomes an acoustical channel," explains Schnitta. "It's a closed reflective environment." So Schnitta turned off the switch operating the HVAC system, the noise stopped, and everyone in the room applauded.
Schnitta had verified the cause but now had to incorporate a solution to what were essentially two problems. First, the noise in the conference room had to be deadened; second, the noise in the office below, caused by the duct system in the ceiling, was so loud no one would work in it. The solution came in two parts.
First the HVAC duct was wrapped in special material to deaden the noise. Then the ceiling tiles were replaced with special tiles that had a higher-grade absorptive quality on the side facing the office and a high STC (noise stopping material) rated material on the side facing the duct.
The result? The noise in that office is now lower than the noise in the open office area outside it.