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I kind of wish that multi-unit housing came with sound isolation ratings. That'd create an incentive to have better isolation and help customers weigh the tradeoffs.
we need to put sound insulation into the building codes. it won't increase rents much since all the money's in the land anyways. personally I've never had an actual issue with noise form other units but I'll grant this to the people who do.
I don't really want to force a specific bottom limit on sound insulation, which is what that would do, though.
Some people won't care as much as others relative to price and may not want to pay what it'd cost. And some people may want a much-quieter unit than any bottom limit would place.
The problem is that they can't make an informed decision now because the information isn't available.
Might be worth just mandating it since you can also fix thermal efficiency issues at the same time. And that affects everyone since poor thermal efficiency = more pressure on the electricity grid and increased risks of extreme cold and heat to individuals.
But transparency would certainly be better than nothing.
So just stick all the poor people with the paper thin walls?
The problem is the information isn’t available. There’s no place to leave reviews of apartments. That seems like a no-brainer to me.
First, IBC has had this as code for at least 15 years.
Second, all the money is most definitely not in the land. As a general ballpark, developers want the land to be under 1/4 of the total cost of the project.
Nice. How effective is that minimum standard? Most currently existing buildings are of course older than 15 years so most people won't have experienced it. Sadly these days anywhere remotely urban has way more than 1/4 the cost as land, espically for already existing buildings
Pretty sure sound isolation is a factor in LEED rating
It is, but LEED was kind of a flash-in-the-pan fad for tax breaks and hardly any developers strive for a LEED certificate anymore (exception I've seen is govt projects). the cost of LEED certification is too much for most developers to stomach.
Nowadays I mostly see LEED as an extra set of letters in a person's email signature.
Perhaps LEED should be replaced by a bunch of smaller certifications, each covering only a tiny subset.
It is nice to have one logo you can stick on a building, instead of lots of them. But after a little pushing it could be normalized to have a spot for multiple plaques near the entrance of a building, showing which certs it has earned.
Then you have a lower bar for entry and owners can choose a la carte what they want to strive for, and disregard the rest.
Like, a sound isolation rating on an apartment building would be a huge selling point. Have a certifying company that brings in big speakers and microphones and tests room-to-room sound conduction. Then you get a certification for the soundproofing.
I guess the nice thing about private cert authorities is anybody can just do this. It would take a while to get recognized but you could solve the two-sided marketplace problem pretty easily.
LEED kinda works like that with the different levels. LEED Gold checks off requirements a, b, and c; LEED Platinum also includes d and e, etc. I'm not LEED accredited, though, so I can't speak to the finer differences.
There is a new standard making headway called WELL Certification . I'm not sure the difference between this and LEED but I'd be interested to learn more one day.
There are standards for such ratings, and several countries have mandated minimums, which lead to longer and healthier lives.
This is part of my argument against the recent trend to allow bigger wood framed buildings, so they’re cheaper. There’s only so much you can do to soundproof a multi family house, but a large apartment building needs more. You know here’s higher risk of fires, flooding and damage just by having more people. You know statistically there will be noise issues. You can’t just pass the responsibility on the tenants when you know this will be a problem. Larger buildings should be required to be built in a way to protect tenants from this, ie. Not wood. They deserve at least as much consideration as the builder’s profits
Larger buildings are required to do this under IBC, and have been for many years. You can absolutely make a modern multifamily wood framed building quiet with proper design and construction.
There's no perfect building material. Wood has issues. But concrete is terrible for the planet from a climate perspective and we're rapidly running out of quality aggregate (especially sand) in many parts of the world. You can make a list of pros and cons about any other material, too.