The need to open a window is essential, for connectivity to outdoors and for additional ventilation or to naturally cool your home. However, if you live in a noisy or polluted environment, it can be a difficult balance between opening your window for thermal relief or hearing outdoor sounds, or closing your window to rest or sleep because it’s too noisy.
For decades, acoustic consultants have used a variety of single figure values, all representing a ‘partially open window’. However, this single figure value is too simplistic in modern building design, when altering the amount of window openings can make a significant difference between pass or fail of an overheating assessment for Approved Document O.
To overcome this problem, we’ve been undertaking research alongside our friends at Apex Acoustics into the theoretical and in-situ sound reduction of an open window. We have been presenting the findings at various conferences and developing more data to gain a better understanding. Please find below a link to the paper presented at the CIBSE Technical Symposium in April 2024.