How to achieve STC 50 in your next project

For the best STC performance, architects should design walls to full height, with the floor or roof above. In some cases such as renovations, building a full height wall to achieve STC 50 may not be possible. Rockfon offers a simple solution to achieve STC 50 without full height walls – the addition of Rockfon® Plenum Barrier Board™. A noise blocking panel manufactured with stone wool, which is installed over walls inside ceiling plenums or under walls in raised-floor plenums to increase sound insulation and privacy between rooms. Lightweight and easy to cut, Rockfon® Plenum Barrier Board™ installs quickly above interior partitions and conforms around pipes and ducts.

Research conducted by Rockfon and NGC Testing Services1 shows that this lightweight plenum barrier made of stone wool insulation or gypsum board positioned vertically above the wall, blocking the plenum, can provide an STC/CAC 50 level of blocking when combined with a stone wool ceiling system. This option can decrease the cost of the ceiling, allow for greater aesthetic flexibility and prevent the need to control noise leaks through the ceiling system.

Looking for personalized acoustics support on your next project? Get in touch with us to work with Dr. Gary Madaras, Rockfon's in-house acoustic specialist, to offer insights & expertise on relevant acoustics topics like NRC, building standards & guidelines and more.

Understanding Best Blocking (STC 50) – Full Height Walls

A sound blocking level of STC 50 means that a listener in a quiet room would need to exert effort to hear raised speech levels in adjacent rooms, and the speech would not be understandable or disruptive. Acoustic standards, guidelines, and building rating systems require an STC 50 rating between rooms such as classrooms¹, conference rooms ²^, ³, executive offices², patient exam rooms, treatment rooms and consultation rooms⁴. 

Sources

^{¹ ANSI/ASA S12.60-2010/Part 1 American National Standard Acoustical Performance Criteria, Design Requirements, and Guidelines for Schools, Part 1: Permanent Schools. (acousticalsociety.org)
² U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), version 4. (leed.usgbc.org) 
³ International WELL Building Institute, The WELL Building Standard, v 1, February 2016. Access the standard at wellcertified.com.
⁴ 2014 edition of the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Outpatient Facilities. (fgiguidelines.org)
⁵ The referenced laboratory test(s) are part of an extensive, multi-year, testing program conducted by the National Research Council Canada (NRCC) and published by the Institute for Research in Construction (IRC). For more details, including 1/3 octave band transmission loss data, refer to internal reports IRC-IR-693, October 1995 and IRC-IR-761, March 1998. The research program was partially funded by ROXUL, Inc. ROCKFON and ROXUL are subsidiaries of the ROCKWOOL Group.}