One of the significant change in the LEED v4 rating system is the implementation of Acoustic Performance credit in Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ) category. The new construction building will receive 1 point for its compliance. The credit added the requirements for room noise levels, speech privacy and sound isolation, reverberation time, and paging, masking, and sound reinforcement systems harmonized ANSI and ASHRAE standards. Effective acoustic design provides classroom and workspaces that promote occupant communication, productivity, and well-being. The ASHRAE (American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Condition Engineers) has been developing a standard for high performance buildings in conjunction with Illumination Engineering …show more content…
Use of Glass. Utilizing daylight to reduce electric lighting energy and to improve lighting quality requires a greater number of windows in the building enclosure and in some cases use of interior glass partitions. Interior glass partitions helps to transmit daylight further into buildings but also lead to decreased sound isolation between interior spaces. Unfortunately, windows and glass partitions have significantly lower sound isolating capabilities than the opaque wall and roof elements they are replacing. An additional problem with the increased use of glass is the fact that glass has very low acoustic absorption and when used for daylighting and views, cannot be covered with an acoustic absorbing material. As a result, reverberation can be significant in rooms with large amounts of glass leading to speech privacy and speech clarity issues. Furthermore, the increased use of daylight can led to an increased transmission of outdoor noise to the building’s interior. The conflict between the use of glass for daylighting and the acoustic problems glass creates cannot be avoided. However, many building designs use extreme amounts of glass for architectural purposes, far beyond what is necessary for views and daylighting. A more careful design of the building enclosure can minimize the amount of required glass and still provide the desired amount of daylight and outdoor views by replacing some glass with more conventional solid wall construction (not simply using spandrel glass). The remaining opaque sections of the enclosure must then be carefully designed to provide very high sound isolation to help compensate for the poor sound isolation of the glass that has been