Dartmouth College sought to create a new space within the Tuck School of Business that would combine faculty and administrative offices with residential facilities for its Executive Education program. The planned project would introduce modern, energy efficient air conditioning equipment to the rooftop of Buchanan Hall. The new equipment posed a noise control concern to the college and the town, because the site is near neighboring residential homes and within close proximity of the Dartmouth College President’s House. The College hired Acentech to determine if sound levels emanating from this new equipment would be consistent with the existing sound levels of the rural setting.

Acentech assessed the existing sound levels of the area and predicted the future sound levels with the proposed equipment. We used two environmental sound level monitors to record the sound levels and provide the design team with insight of baseline conditions, which were subsequently used for reference in the documents submitted to the town review board. Acentech created an acoustical computer model of the proposed rooftop unit and existing equipment to graphically represent the estimated sound level emissions from the proposed equipment to the surrounding area. The model included details of the complex topography in addition to the buildings’ and the mechanical systems’ geometries and characteristics. The graphical sound level contours provided the college and the town with a visual understanding of the anticipated sound levels of the project.