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mass-loaded vinyl on a wooden fence


m21rwn

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Hi, 

Does anybody have any experience of using mass loaded vinyl on a wooden fence to dull down noise of traffic. I live on a busy A road with a fence that has no gaps. My intention is to install this on the back side of the fence in the hope that it will mask out some of the sounds of the road noise. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

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44 minutes ago, m21rwn said:

Hi, 

Does anybody have any experience of using mass loaded vinyl on a wooden fence to dull down noise of traffic. I live on a busy A road with a fence that has no gaps. My intention is to install this on the back side of the fence in the hope that it will mask out some of the sounds of the road noise. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 

are you looking to attach it directly to the back of the existing panels or to form a cavity?

 

what is the construction of the existing fence?

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Just now, Moonshine said:

 

are you looking to attach it directly to the back of the existing panels or to form a cavity?

 

what is the construction of the existing fence?

 

Yes attached directly the exsisting panels. 

It is wooden single panelled fence with no gaps. Much like the one pictured. 

Not too worried about how it looks as will be planting trees infront of it.

fence.jpg

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what mass loaded vinyl (surface density) are you looking to use, and what is the thickness of the panels on the fence already?

 

You may be at the point that adding material to the fence won't make a significant difference as the noise coming over the fence is the dominant impact

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@Moonshine makes a very good point, sound management can be very complex. I remember being an engineer on Hammersmith Underground Station Rebuild and complaints started regarding trains getting louder.

Turned out our sound deadening Glass was bouncing the noise off of the adjascent building making it worse than before

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4 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

what mass loaded vinyl (surface density) are you looking to use, and what is the thickness of the panels on the fence already?

 

You may be at the point that adding material to the fence won't make a significant difference as the noise coming over the fence is the dominant impact

I was looking at 5kg/m2, 2mm in thickness. The thickness of the panels are around 10mm.

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The wooden panels (10mm) have a surface mass of about 4kg/m2, and adding the vinyl will double the mass, which may result in a ~3 dB reduction (mass law) in noise coming through the fence, but does not account for the noise coming over the top of the fence.

 

tbh i don't think that adding the vinyl will result in a significant reduction in noise levels in the garden. The best course of action is dependant on many variables such as the topology if the site and the road, and a more effective solution may be increasing the height of the barrier or introducing a second lining of the fence on the inside of the fence posts to create a cavity.

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I have a street at one side of our garden and have looked into this a little bit.

 

A lot depends on the topography.

 

Does the fence sit above or below the road? As people have noted if the road sits high relative to the fence then the sound may be coming over the fence.

 

Is there a gap under the fence? Again sound would come through there

 

Certainly making the fence heavier would help to reduce noise, you can buy blankets to hang over the fence and reduce the noise, but only if noise through the fence is the main source of noise.

 

It might be worth trying to attach something temporary to the fence to see if it makes a difference before going to the time and expense of doing the whole fence.

 

 

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