Babies Need Their Sleep

[gullfo]

recommend a partition wall with window(s) and a non-locking door. what is the construction of the ceiling? what about HVAC? you'll want good air flow into the room and if the ceiling is a drop ceiling, you'll want to put the partition all the way up to the actual ceiling above it and the appropriate ducting changes to ensure minimal noise transfer between the main space and sleeping room.

[mjtripper]

It took us a while to find a daycare with a separate sleeping room in the infant room but we think it makes a huge difference. This one is a room in the corner of a room and one of the two walls has the entire top half as two pieces of glass similar to what you might see at a nursery in the birthing floor of a hospital. The door into it is a non-locking double swinging door. It's not sound proof but it works well enough that any noise doesn't impact the kids sleeping and passes all the regulations for our area.

[jwl]

Yes, just getting a wall up will help tremendously. If you really want to crank up the soundproofing, then you can put up 2 layers of drywall on both sides, and stuff the wall with insulation inside. This will help a lot.

If you want to make it extremely soundproof then you will also need to follow Glenn's advice and look at HVAC and other structural issues.

[HermanV]

Originally Posted by SleepyBabies

Hi
Ethan Winer recommended I post to this forum. I am the parent of a child in a daycare. The issue I am seeing the infants in the infant room are not able to get a lot of sleep. The main cause is that there is no meaningful separation between the sleeping area and the playing area. The room is basically a rectangle and on one end is the sleeping area, the middle is the kitchen and the other end is the play area.

So when kids are squealing in the play area or kitchen area it easily travels to the sleeping area.

I would like to know if there are any solutions to reduce the amount of noise in this area while at the same time allowing the teachers to see the kids in the sleep area and respond to issues just as quickly.

The proportions are roughly as follows

1/4 sleep area
1/4 kitchen/entrance/changing area.
1/2 play area.

8 foot ceiling
~15/20 feet wide
~25/30 feet long

Any insight/thoughts would be fantastic.

Thanks a lot.

I would divide the space with a standard wall and double laminate windows for your requirements. should be able to be built fast and cheap if you hire the right guy.

[Gohanto]

The wall solution will likely provide the best results, however I would suggest researching the following
- Additional egress exits may be required when you turn 1 room into 2 to meet building code (Extremely important, as those codes are written to make sure people can get out of a building safely and quickly in the event of a fire)
- HVAC (as previously mentioned) may not function properly depending on where the supply/return diffusors are located in the ceiling
- HVAC ducts may also transfer sound easily between rooms, which might require lining the ducts with fiberglass, or re-routing the ducts (both of these may require consulting with a mechanical engineer to see what that does to pressure losses and if it might affect other parts of the building)


Personally, my first though is to try replacing the current ceiling with high NRC (min. 0.9) /CAC (min 30) acoustical ceiling panel, and some 2" fabric wrapped, fiberglass panels along the walls (high enough that kids can't reach them). That'll limit some of the sound from bouncing from one end of the room to the other, and it's cheap. In addition, adding a pony wall (high enough so there's no line of sight from the kids eye level across the room), may help direct sound as well.

The next step would be trying a sound masking system (Cambridge makes a fairly cheap one that's pretty easy to install). http://www.csmqt.com/
Other manufacturers are Dynasound and Logison (pretty sure Cambridge is the simplest and cheapest though)
The idea here is ceiling mounted speakers throughout the room, and playing back noise (with a very carefully set EQ so it's not annoying like most HVAC noise). This helps sound from one side of the room not to be heard on the other side of the room as easily.

Very come to use in open-offices, where there are no walls, but people still want speech privacy.

Like I mentioned before though, a permanent wall will be the best sound isolation, but I think professionals should be consulted first to check Egress and HVAC first.

[SleepyBabies]

Thanks. All great information. I found out that a wall is not going to be possible due to state regulations and the staffing available at the daycare. Even a glass/plexi wall wont work. So whatever solution we come up with has to work with the space as it is.

Regarding your first thing to try - it sounds really great but contains a lot of stuff that I dont fully understand. Do you mind dumbing it down for me and include links to products so I know what they are ?

Also - the sound supressors seem interesting. Do you know if they work with screaming kids?

Lastly - do you know how we could model different solutions so we can be pretty confident that whatever path we go down will reduce the noise enough for it to be worthwhile?

[AwwDeOhh]

i suppose one of these is out of the question...


(sorry, it's late...)