THE ACOUSTICS GUIDELINES FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Abstracts
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Essence of Acoustics Guidelines for Primary and Secondary School
3.0 The nature of the building (case study)
4.0 Effects of Sound in the Classrooms
5.0 Analysis of Acoustics in primary & Secondary Schools
6.0 Paths of sound transmission within and without the Classrooms building.
7.0 Acoustic guidelines for Primary and Secondary School.
8.0 Recommendations
9.0 Conclusion
References
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Acoustics occupies a curious place in Designing a primary and secondary school. It is a very important aspect of a design. Acoustics as a branch of physics is concerned with the study of sound which has a critical place in creating building designs because of its effects on human. Human being at times fined sound as unwanted element when it restore to noise in the environment. For the fact that, we call sound our perception of waves emanating from some mechanical Vibration, which some of this waves can affect the human ears, there is a need to control this sounds to the level where the ears can bear it.
2.0 ESSENCE OF ACOUSTICS GUIDELINES FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL
The essence of these guidelines is to restrict the architect design from acoustics problems when designing a Primary or Secondary School.
But before one can give a guideline for designing a primary or secondary school, there is a need to study an existing school, which may be primary, or secondary school primary or secondary school to know the problems of acoustics, it is then the guidelines for the schools can be stated.
A case study was carried out in Royal International School, Oke-Ogba, Akure; to study and give the guidelines that must be met.
3.0 The Nature of the Building
The building has a residential approach; it was designed for living not primary school. The building is situated in a noisy environment, an environment that is close to the road, where traffic contributes to noise pollution. The building has a setback of 9m from the gate to the building. The building was designed for a Civil Servant. An educationist who later had an impression of owing a primary school and ordered to convert the building to a primary school.
4.0 EFFECTS OF SOUND IN CLASSROOMS
The effects of sound in the classrooms are very high in the sense that, the major partition found in the classrooms area are soft partition i.e. dwarf board to divide the classrooms. In the kindergarten section, soft partitions are the major partitions that can be seen in the classrooms. The tendency of noise is contributed by the pupils in the Kindergarten section. They make a lot of noise to the extent that, the teachers see it has a problem and most times leave their classrooms to another.
The partition would have sub-due the noise from the classrooms, if it was hard i.e. walls, but because of the experiment that says the more the thickness of an absorbent material; the more is able to resist and reduce the noise.
The footfall by pupils in and outside the classrooms is another contribution of sound, which is an unwanted sound. It simply means when two distinctive features. The door slams as every day occurrence in the classrooms is another unwanted sound that contributes to noise pollution. It interferes with the speech intelligibility of the teacher teaching.
CASE STUDY ROYAL INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, OKE-OGBA, AKURE.
Noise barrier from road into the building soft partition unable to resist the
(sub-standard acoustic material) noise contributed by pupils in the classroom
Wrong zoning of primary 3 classroom close Soft partition
to the kindergarten section (recommended acoustic material wall)
Head mistress located very close to the kindergarten classroom (wrong zoning of space)
Inadequate acoustic materials (dwarf fence) to Inadequate landscape elements, which would have reduce noise coming into the
Subdue noise barrier from the road building
Kindergartens classroom located at the entrance Vehicular movement creating noise
of the building (noise barrier to the classroom into the primary building
next to the pupils in primary 3
5.0 ANALYSIS OF ACOUSTICS IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL
The analysis of sound in primary and secondary school whether desired or undesired (NOISE) can be most expeditiously view from the stand points of source, path and receiver. This divides the analysis of an acoustical problem into components that can be more easily addressed.
The sources of noise in primary and secondary school can be divided into 3 categories:
(1) The sources associated with classroom activity and office equipment
(2) Sources associated with the operation of building services.
(3) Sources of environmental sound from outside the building premises of the classroom, these sources of noise can also be sources of vibration that may interfere with classroom activity or comfort.
Sound and vibration produced by classroom pupils as well as pupils in the offices includes door slams, footfall. Cart roll-bys, conversation, pegging and warning signals, some of these are almost always undesirable, while others are most often desirable or at least needed to be heard.
6.0 PATHS OF SOUND TRANSMISSION WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE CLASSROOM BUILDING
There is only one path of sound transmission between spaces in a Primary and Secondary School which is the Air-borne sound. An example of an airborne path is one where sound transmitted from the same source classroom through small openings in a demising wall into the receiving classroom. A second example is the beating of school drums and the use of organ at the assembly Hall excites air in the source room. The air in the source room excites the demising wall between the source room and the receiving room, causing bending waves correspondingly excites the air on the receiving room side as they propagate over the surface of the demising wall. In both cases, air-borne sound excites a structure that correspondingly excites air on the receiving side or transmits through the wall openings.
Acoustic conditions within the schools can have a profound impact on pupil’s learning and the members of the staff, most especially to the building regulations guiding the design for the fact that schools are designed for learning, a critical control of noise within and around schools environment to achieve a quiet place for learning, hence the design consideration as following:
1. The standard requires that the signal to noise ratio in a classroom must be +15dB, which is related to the room’s amplification scheme.
2. Proper zoning of spaces according to the functions they perform.
3. Introduction of suitable acoustic materials to obtain the right acoustic balance between the different spaces.
4. The use of the correct mixture of acoustically hard and soft materials to create different spaces appropriate for the purpose they serve.
5. Classrooms in Primary and Secondary Schools must maintain a background noise level below 35dB to allow speakers voices to reach all listeners at the desired +15dB Signal to noise ration (Nelson 2002).
6. Classrooms must not have long reverberation times, so that students will not perceive words as over lapping e.g. words like “Cat” to “Cab”
7. Classrooms must not have too short reverberation time not to have a suffered tonal balance and loudness.
8. The behaviour of sound within classrooms must be linked to the room sizes and shapes to have an effective balance of sound in the rooms.
9. The control of all undesired sounds, from the exterior sources, adjacent spaces within the building and the control of desired sounds so that they can be properly distributed without echo or distortion through out the space.
10. Desired sound must be distributed uniformly throughout the listening space without long delayed discrete reflections (echo), focused reflections, repetitive reflections (flouter echoes) or other undesirable colorations of the original source.
11. The control of Reverberation not to damage speech intelligibility.
12. Adequate control of sound to limit inadequate persistence of sound, which has a lot of effects on human.
13. Door slams as every day occurrence in the classrooms must be controlled, which interfere with speech intelligibility.
14. Footfall as a nemesis in Primary and Secondary School environment, must be controlled to limit the unwanted sound (footfall simply means having two distinctive characteristics).
7.0 ACOUSTIC GUIDELINES FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL
Acoustic conditions within schools can have a profound impact on pupil’s learning and staff performance. The building regulations states that:-
Each room or other space in a school building shall be designed and constructed in such a way that it has the acoustic conditions and the insulation against disturbance by noise appropriate to it’s intended use.
In order to satisfy the building regulations, some standards have to be met, which includes:-
1. Indoor ambient noise levels
2. Air borne sound insulation between spaces.
3. Air borne sound insulation between corridors or Stairwells and other spaces.
4. Impact sound insulation of floors.
5. Reverberation in teaching and study spaces e.g. classroom, lecture room and library.
6. Sound absorption in corridors, entrance hall and stairwells.
7. Speech intelligibility in open-plan spaces.
8.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
In accessing the Acoustics of a Primary and Secondary School environment there is a need adhere strictly on the rules and regulations guiding not only these buildings, but generally all building designs to maintain the acoustic balance.
The zoning of spaces is also a major area the planning authority needs to Focus on, because over 60 percent of Primary and Secondary Schools are not built in their respectful Zones must of them are located in the Commercial zones which inculcates the problems of noise in conjunction with Acoustics in the building premises.
For the fact that, noise pollution cannot be eradicated, but can only be sub-due, there is a need to introduce an acoustic materials, and not only just material, but the correct use and mixtures of acoustically hard and soft materials to create appropriate use of spaces in this environment.
9.0 CONCLUSION
The importance of Acoustics cannot be overlooked or erased from the building criteria’s, because it is part of the major consideration that must be observed in a design and because of its effects on human health.
Hence, an Architect must restrict His or Her design in line with Acoustic not to have an adverse reaction in the design of a building and if however all goes well, the users of the design will find the building conducive and bearable.
REFERENCE
· Gregory C. Tocci: Building Noise Control Applications (A Book of Reading in Architectural Acoustics), page100 (Chapter 3).
· Internet Explorer : (Goggle Search): The National Society of Black Physicists and the Acoustical Society of America (NSBP/ASA).
· Internet Explorer
(Goggle Search): Find the right Sound Pro-Solutions for Schools (The Building Regulation 2000).
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