Commercial and Retail Facilities
Site approvals for new commercial facilities can require community approvals for levels of environmental noise at property lines and sensitive receivers. The required environmental assessments may require evaluations of noise generated by outdoor mechanical equipment, traffic in parking lots and on site roadways, site maintenance equipment, and indoor noise transmitted through exterior constructions.
Communities may specify in their code chapters on noise or zoning the maximum noise levels a facility may generate, or might otherwise specify that operations must not generate annoyance or be perceptible above the background noise levels. Criteria may be specified differently for daytime and nighttime hours and by the respective zoning classifications of receiver properties and properties containing the sources. The community code chapters may also describe restricted activities, such as nighttime maintenance activities and construction, and operations of noisy mechanical equipment. We perform assessments of community noise from commercial facilities using acoustical models developed from site plans, mechanical equipment source levels either obtained from manufacturers or direct survey, and measured and modeled community background noise levels. The background noise levels may be modeled using traffic count data obtained from state and local traffic agencies.
Inside a commercial development, tenants may require certain degrees of sound insulation
from adjoining spaces to minimize noise intrusions and to allow proper speech privacy.
Tenants may also require a degree of isolation from exterior traffic sources. Building
constructions may need to be appropriately selected to afford the desired degree
of sound attenuation based on code or tenant requirements or based on appropriate
reference criteria. Design goals for exterior sound attenuation of commercial facilities
may be based on documents such as ASHRAE Standard 189.1P Standard for the Design
of High-
We provide design assistance to commercial building developers, architects, and engineers to help them evaluate:
- Overall site noise emissions in comparison to community noise criteria to identify facility noise acceptability or needs for mitigation
- Component noise levels from parking lots, site roadways, and maintenance sources to determine layouts of buildings and roads and designs of site screening
- Component noise levels from mechanical equipment to assist with equipment selection, placement, and designs of source screening
- Interior and exterior building constructions for sound attenuation of tenant spaces
