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Architectural and Building Acoustic Design

Building Acoustics, or Architectural Acoustics, design and testing is a key specialism of Dragonfly Acoustics.

From our offices in York in the north of England our acoustic consultancy team offers a construction review service and can assist in the design of the acoustics of any building from the initial concept stage.

Our team have worked on projects as diverse as medical facilities, hotels, residential houses and flats and interview suites, always ensuring the acoustic separation between rooms meets both the regulatory requirements and the standards of the client.

For residential dwellings, in particular, the acoustic performance of walls and floors between dwellings and the internal partitions within a dwelling is regulated by Approved Document E of the Building Regulations 2000. By streamlining the process we can help minimise build costs and ensure that the internal structures comply with the requirements of these Regulations.

Environmental and sustainability issues are increasingly important and we strive to ensure our clients gain every advantage for their developments. We specialise in meeting the requirements of the Department for Communities and Local Government Codes for Sustainable Homes (EcoHomes) or The Building Research Establishment's Ecohomes scheme (BREEAM).

For a completed project we can carry out the required sound insulation tests to ensure compliance with all client and building regulations.

More information about Sound Insulation Testing (also referred to as Sound Testing or Noise Testing) is available on our Sound Insulation Testing page.

Approved Document E

Approved Document E refers to the Requirements of Part E of Schedule 1 of the Building Regulations 2000 (as amended by SI 2002/2871), and specifically to the following requirements:

Protection against sound from other parts of the building and adjoining buildings

E1 Dwelling-houses, flats and rooms for residential purposes shall be designed and constructed in such a way that they provide reasonable resistance to sound from other parts of the same building and from adjoining buildings.

For the purposes of Approved Document E, adjoining is taken to mean dwelling-houses, flats, rooms for residential purposes and buildings in direct physical contact with another dwelling-house, flat, room for residential purpose or building.

Performance Standards

The normal way of satisfying Requirement E1 for dwelling-houses and flats is to build walls, separating floors and stairs that have a separating function, together with their associated flanking constructions, in such a way that they achieve the sound insulation values shown in Table 1.

The required performance standards differ between new build developments and developments which are effected by a material change of use. The performance requirements are available to downloaded below.

All the information contained on this page is available to download as a PDF file below.