Deer Park Community Hall-  Brimbank City Council

Problem

The Deer Park Community Hall is an older classic building with high ceilings and wooden floors, walls and ceilings. The hall is used for diverse community events including weddings, community group gatherings and performances.  The large surface area of walls, ceilings and floor in the interior space led to high levels of reverberation; that is, reflected sound waves causing echo effects and poor speech clarity. The use of amplified sound and the presence of larger groups of people exacerbated the problem

Analysis

On inspection it was obvious that the reverberation time was very high and needed to be reduced significantly to make the hall a more comfortable space for occupants. With a significant wall area unavailable for installation of sound absorbing panels because of windows, the most obvious location for the sound treatment was on the ceilings.

Solution.

It was decided in cooperation with the Brimbank City Council Manager Mr Shaun Neeson to install SerenityLite Fabric Acoustic Panels to the ceiling of the hall.  25mm thick panels were chosen because of their excellent sound absorption in the voice frequency range – the most commonly expected frequencies expected in this hall.

The panel size of 1200mmx600mm meant they were easy to install, direct fixing them to the ceiling using a scissor lift. One of the challenges of older buildings is warping of the existing components. Experienced installers can overcome this by using a variety of fixing methods to ensure the panels can be installed square and level.

The installed SerenityLite Panels were manufactured by Sontext with Rim Trilogy “Misty” fabric facing supplied by Innova, a very hard wearing durable and fire retardant fabric.

Overall approximately 45 percent of the ceiling area was covered by panels and the result was the excessive reverberation was minimised to the satisfaction of the client.