Electrical Trades Training Centre and Workshop – Kangan Institute

Problem

Kangan Institute are a large vocational education and training provider in Victoria Australia. In partnership with the ETU (Electrical Trades Union) they operate a training centre for Electrical trades apprentices and technicians. The teaching staff were having difficulties communicating with students due to very high noise levels. The students in turn had difficulties hearing clearly and concentrating.

Analysis

The training rooms are large volume interior spaces with high raked ceilings and a number of exposed mechanical services penetrations through the ceiling. The space contained a number of mock-up walls, simulating a constructing site.

The numerous hard surfaces created a noisy environment caused by reverberation. The reverberation was caused by the reflection of sound waves from these hard surfaces, creating “echo” effects and speech distortion.

Solution

After consultation with the management of ETU and Kangan Institute teaching staff, it was decided to install sound absorbing SerenityLite Wall and Ceiling Panels. In this type of situation, it is ideal to install sound absorbing Acoustic panels as close as possible to the sound source. In this case, the most reflective surfaces.

It was found that most of the excessive noise was in the mid to high frequency range. This  provides the information to specify the appropriate thickness sound absorbing panel The choice of panel thickness was 25mm thick SerenityLite as this was the optimum solution to absorb sound waves at frequencies voices. The panels were manufactured by Sontext with Trilogy One acoustic fabric facing, for the walls and ceilings. Made to order manufacturing is a specialty of Sontext, to enable installation around fixtures, windows and doors, etc, in existing buildings.