Street Traffic Noise

Noise Control Challenge:

Residential homes situated close to nearby highways, loud street traffic, loud railroad and noisy airports are all exposed to high levels of unwelcome residential noise.   Our goal is to better insulated the home for residential sound control by blocking out exterior noise from entering the home.

Soundproofing Treatment:

You have to brace your self for some unsettling news here.    The proper way to combat a sound problem is not to treat the recipient of the noise, but to treat the source of the noise.    In this case, we cannot enclosed the automobile, airplane, barking dog or rail car, making it impossible to contain the noise.   The best we can hope to do is control the amount of exposure that is bleeding in.   You will never be able to completely soundproof your living quarters from this noise unless you move.

The noise itself is entering both through structure borne and airborne energy paths.    To combat the noise, we outline the use of dB-Bloc and the disconnecting framing techniques you need in our Walls section of this Applications Guide.    These residential soundproofing techniques can be applied to new build or existing homes to combat exterior noise.   By adding density to your walls and disconnecting the inner surface from the exterior or your home, you can force much of the structure borne noise attempting to vibrate through to collapse inside your walls.   This will control you exposure to loud trains, noisy street traffic and airplane noise.

To combat the airborne noise, there is less you can do to guard against noise bleeding in through vents, outlets, pipes, exhaust fans, chimneys, and other "flanking paths" that noise can take.    For windows, apply Soundproof Windows atop your existing windows for greater sound insulation.   All of these products and more for combating street traffic noise are featured here in our Product Bin.

Acoustic Result:

As we simulate in our Sound Chamber, if you can manage to trigger a mere 3 dB drop in your sound exposure levels, that is a 50% drop in perceived street traffic noise.     Results will vary greatly in attempting to treat external noise from entering into a residential home.    Much of it has to do with the quality of the home, the exterior surfaces, the windows and doors, the flanking paths, the extent of the soundproofing treatments you apply, and the proximity to the sound source.