Floorers/installers
Did you know that when the owner of a high-rise apartment wants to install hard flooring, there are Body Corporate By-Laws regarding acoustic performance that must be met?
Terminology
When renovating or replacing the carpet in apartment blocks it is necessary to ask the client for a copy of the by-laws. Different buildings will have different rules about what level of amenity the body corporate would like to achieve.
Depending on the wording they may include FIIC, IIC, L’nT,w, L’n,w, L’nT,w+CI or L’nT,w+CI. These terms can lead to some confusion, for the you and the body corporate. It is important to go in understanding that the body Corporate have had little to no training in this field and it is not uncommon for a by-law to be technically incorrect.
AIIC (FIIC) is an ASTM (American Society of Testing Materials) which represents a floor/ceiling assembly’s ability to resist the transmission of impact noise. A higher value represents greater performance. This method has not been adopted by the National Construction Code 2022.
IIC is the laboratory certificate – Not conducted on site and is not relevant to the Body Corporates Building.
L’nT,w is a term used in the National Construction Code of Australia (NCC – see Appendix A) and represents a corrected room noise level, with a lower number showing better performance, this is the national standard and it is recommended that this be adopted
L’n,w – Weighted Normalised impact sound pressure level; a laboratory measurement of impact sound transmission between rooms. Lower values denote better performance. The single figure measure is derived by adapting a standard response curve to measured 1/3 octave band sound pressure level measurements. Measured results are adjusted based on the absorption of 10m2 in the receiving room. Normally derived from a laboratory test
Palmer Acoustics is the leading Impact Insulation Testing specialists with a data base of over 4000 onsite tests/samples, as a result we have nearly seen every type of wording/combination that is out there.
What we offer is so much more than just a number.
Give us a call before you install and plan to pretest! We might just save you thousands….
