Introduction
Focus on Vented Facades
One of the main difficulties in designing low energy buildings is the prevention of noise break-in from the many noisy sources affecting modern buildings, including motorways, dual carriageways, trains, aeroplanes and inner city noise. The acoustic design of the facade becomes fundamental - this means an attenuator in the facade must provide high levels of sound resistance in a limited depth.
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Focus on Cross Ventilation
Cross ventilation is one of the most effective forms of natural ventilation. Acoustics plays a key role in the design of a cross ventilated building as air must flow freely through the building, while maintaining privacy across partitions. Cross talk attenuators within partitions adjacent to circulation spaces allow cross ventilation, as well as provide privacy.
One of the drawbacks of ventilating through the corridor wall is the need for an exceptionally large bulk head to accommodate big, heavy attenuators. The Honeycomb Attenuator provides exceptional levels of cross talk separation. We’ve undertaken extensive research to understand the required levels of acoustic separation across these partitions
Under Floor
In the same way that a NAT Vent can be incorporated into the façade of a building it is also possible to install the NAT Vent Attenuator under a raised floor system. The vent openings are made within the spandrel panel between transoms. Air passes into the cellular space by passing through an external vent opening, through the NAT Vent Attenuator, with the floor void being used as plenum, air enters the rooms above by means of floor diffusers. This is a very effective way of dealing with high noise levels. Not only this, the system can also be used to cross ventilate rooms at the same level or between levels.
Chimneys
Ventilation stacks are an exceptionally popular way of providing cross ventilation to teaching, office and the other types of shared spaces. However this form of ventilation has a number of challenges and limiting factors. The cost of the roof terminal units are high and their installation cost are equally high.
When stacks are required to pass through more than one floor, it is common to use an independent stack per floor to stop noise transmission. This increases cost significantly and considerably reduces useable floor area. The solution is to incorporate the NAT Vent Attenuator within the ventilation stack, preventing the cross talk between floors. This enables a single stack to be used, which in turn recovers cost and floor area.
Heat Recovery System
During the colder months natural ventilation has a significant short fall in the fact that heat is lost through opening in the buildings facade. As such there is a trend to move towards heat recovery; recycling the warm air within a building.
To employ heat recovery, air is collected at a given point within a building - typically the top of an atrium or at the end of a circulation zone - air it is then pushed back through the building into the cellular space.
To reduce energy consumption it is vital that the air path proveds as little resistance as possible to the movement of air. The drawback of these low pressure ventilation paths is that they have the potential to allow the passage of sound through the building. The low pressure drop, bespoke nature of the NAT Vent Attenutor is an ideal way of resolving this matter.