I recently accepted a position as a construction inspector...

Question by TomFitz
Submitted on 9/15/2003
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I recently accepted a position as a construction inspector (new construction) for the government. Last week I encountered a problem of louder than normal HVAC supply/return registers in several offices. To confirm my suspicions that this noise was above acceptable standards, I purchased a sound meter. The readings received within these spaces ranged from 68 to 75db. My meter was set at "low range" (35-90db), "A" frequency weighting, for general sound level measurement, and "slow" for normal measurements. Using these same settings,. one of our people checked a fire alarm and his reading was 85 db.. My question: How is it, that the HVAC noise had such high readings, and yet, it was not near as offensive to the ears as the fire alarm, and this alarm, reading only 10db above the HVAC, was extremely offensive to the ears? This fact led my supervisor to question my readings (which I double-checked. Thank you for any rational explaination that I may give these people.. Tom Fitz

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