You live on a busy street with traffic whizzing by continuously. Or on a cul-de-sac, but you contend with lawn mowers and exuberant neighborhood kids. Maybe your family home is near a hospital, and ambulance sirens keep you up half the night. Or there’s an airport within 10 miles.
Whatever your unique situation, it’s likely that you’re aware of more outside activity than you’d like to hear from the comfort of your home. It’s called noise pollution, and it’s a problem in most American cities, suburbs and even smaller communities.
Fortunately, the replacement window industry is on it. Today’s quality energy efficient windows add a variety of technologies and smart construction strategies to buffer noise and add aural comfort to your home life.
How Today’s Energy Efficient Windows Cut Noise
Modern windows are built and designed to keep the cold out in the winter and to block solar radiance so that your house stays cooler in the summertime. But that’s not all that energy efficient windows keep out. They also reduce noise levels from the outside in much the same way that they block sun, cold and rain.
For instance, weather stripping to keep out the cold also goes far toward blocking noise. Multiple panes of glass or the addition of storm windows similarly create soundproof windows in addition to maintaining temperature comfort.
The point is, if you can interrupt the air flow you’ll also block the sound path between your interior and the great big, noisy outside world.
But that’s just a start. There are more technologically advanced ways of reducing noise penetration.
Asymmetrical Panes and Other Strategies
Asymmetrical window glass glazing is a strategy to help reduce sound transmission. It involves the construction of windows with glass layers of varying thicknesses. The idea here is that all of these barriers of different dimensions breaks up sound into various frequencies, dissipating its intensity.
Another approach is through the use of laminated glass, which absorbs sound by breaking it up. Furthermore, window frames constructed of wood, composite materials, PVC or unplasticized polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) rather than metal offer superior sound insulation qualities.
The most effective soundproof windows combine several of these strategies to keep noise pollution at the very minimum.
What’s the Goal?
Your sound reduction end game should be to attempt coming as close as possible to the sound absorbency potential of the walls in which your windows are placed. (It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to meet better sound reduction standards with your window than you can achieve with the wall, after all.)
Upgrade Your Home Today
You’ll find today’s top vinyl replacement windows with superior soundproofing qualities at Advanced Window Products, Utah’s #1 window company.
We’ve made it especially easy now to upgrade your home with sound-buffering energy efficient replacement windows by offering our $0 down, 0% interest financing for six months.
If you need even more motivation to switch to energy efficient windows -- on top of comfort, energy bill savings and dramatic sound reduction -- another key advantage can be the tax savings. You can read more about that here.
Tour our showroom in downtown Salt Lake City. Or call us at (801) 505-9622 for a free estimate at your home, at your convenience. Check out our hours and location information.
