Summertown Interiors

Imagine that a dry wall partition is carefully erected from the floor slab to the ceiling. This dry wall partition has an isolated stud frame which has been filled with acoustical insulation and finished with multiple of layers of dry wall. During construction work an electrician/plumber uses a claw hammer to run a conduit/sprinkler pipe. You then notice that there are gaps and that the dry wall partition no longer fits properly so you issue an instruction to fill all the gaps with insulation.

At this stage it should be noted that insulation does provide sound absorption but does not provide a barrier to sound transmission through and around the wall. Although a ¾ inch gap along the top of a 10 foot wall represents only 1 square foot of an opening, filling it with insulation instead of sealing the gap can limit the walls overall performance by more than 10dB.

The most important aspect of facility design and construction is balance. There is no point installing a good quality door in a poor quality interior wall or vice versa as you will not achieve the required results.

It is crucial to note that in order to optimise acoustical performance, how the materials are put together is often more important than what materials are selected as when sound isolation requirements of a room increase, the effect of an acoustical weak link becomes more and more devastating as each of the components must meet the required performance or they will fail collectively.

At Summertown International we are dedicated to providing our clients with good quality materials thus reducing sound transmission and ensuring customer satisfaction.