Protect Conference Room Privacy

Privacy is a premium for most any conference room setting. Discover here the steps you can take to sound insulate your conference room, protecting the integrity of your office space, and the productivity of the office employees.

When a person speaks inside the conference room, the sound waves radiate throughout the room much like blowing a balloon up. The surfaces in the room, including all 4 walls, the ceiling and the floor, accept first wave sound reflections. As the energy bounces off the wall, a portion of that sound converts to structure borne vibration and attempts to travel through the wall. At that point, the studs or framing will act like a string pulled tight between two coffee cans. Vibrations will carry in and out of a room through the structural connection points, not just an open door, vent or window. So to combat the bleed of noise out of the room, steps can be taken to help disconnect the structure of the common wall. This would be comparable to snipping the string between the two cans.

But before we target the disconnection of the wall assembly, however, steps should also be made to add density to the wall. Think of a tuning fork, the top of a wine glass, or a guitar string. When these objects are allowed to vibrate, they produce sound. But touch any of these vibrating surfaces with your hand, the vibrations will die and so will the sound they produce. By adding mass to a surface, you impede vibration. In turn, when combatting sound bleed through a wall, adding density to the surface will also impede the vibration.

By lining your perimeter walls with the density of mass loaded vinyl, you can impede up to 90% of the unwanted noise from bleeding out of your conference room. Density comes in the form of mass loaded vinyl. Mass loaded vinyl is a thin, weight, sound barrier material that is shipped in 30' rolls to your project site. The material can simply be stapled up to your exisitng wall surface. Note that mass loaded vinyl is just 1/8" thick, but weighs in at more than 150 pounds per 54" x 30' roll. Once you have the density of this material up, the wall will not vibrate as easily. Your next step is to layer furring strips horizontally up the wall. These are nothing more than isolation strips, made of wood or metal, that you will then apply a new, finished drywall layer to their face. These strips will produce a dead air gap within the wall assembly that can help force the collapse of the wave. By layering up mass loaded vinyl, a furring strip, and a new 5/8" drywall layer, you can impede up to 90% of the noise that will otherwise bleed out of your conference room walls.

As for your ceiling, the same treatment can be applied to the ceiling of a conference room, if your ceiling is finished drywall. If your conference room ceiling is a drop grid tile system, there are dense Ceiling Caps that can cut to rest atop your existing tiles to add the same density to your ceiling as you do to your walls. Be sure to triple up on the hangers used to support the grid, so that in turn, the grid can support the extra weight. Note that batting insulation, whether laid above your ceiling, or stuffed between wall joists in a wall, offers little in terms of sound protection. Sound waves bleed through the material like water seeps through a sponge. Proper wall or ceiling sound insulation targets the introduction of mass loaded vinyl and a layering system designed to force the collapse of the vibration. Snip the string.


------

NetWell Noise Control authors one of the most expansive online websites
in the field of soundproofing, with a track record that dates back 20+
years. Hundreds of vertical market applications are pre-defined,
tailored to the specifics of any one soundproofing treatment. For
help with your room acoustics, contact NetWell at 1-800-638-9355.