Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: common house sound proofing

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

RoseWind's dining room is about 30x30, and includes a lounge-y sitting 
area at one end by the heat stove. It was a challenge not to have the 
room feel cavernous, and we had heard SO many warnings about acoustics. 
We have a relatively low ceiling in much of the room (10 ft I think) but 
in the center of the room there is about a 14 ft square area which is a 
raised "coffer" another couple of feet higher. Indirect lighting is 
tucked into a valance around the inner edge; a beautiful stained-wood 
"Quilt" of pieces of scrap wood by a local artist is the flat top of the 
coffer. An area of pattern in the floor wood below reflects the geometry 
of it. This serves to visually break up the ceiling, but we were also 
told that, together with the skylight wells, it helped with acoustics. 

We also have fairly ordinary (though better looking) acoustic tile 
squares on the ceilings of dining, kitchen, kid, and rec rooms. Maybe 
because we are not a community with dozens of young children, though we 
have some, we have not experienced dining as noisy. Conversation in a 
normal voice is routine. 

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l