When designing a performing arts venue, addressing acoustic control is important to enhance performance sound and minimize unwanted noise.
February 8, 2008 - HVAC
When designing a performing arts venue, addressing acoustic control is important to enhance performance sound and minimize unwanted noise.
Managers can achieve acoustic control by properly insulating a venue’s walls, ceilings, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) ductwork with sound-absorbing materials, such as fiberglass insulation.
The new Lindenwood University Fine and Performing Arts Center in St. Charles, Mo., hired Charles E. Jarrell Contracting Company to design and install the facility’s HVAC system. The contractor chose to insulate the system’s ductwork with CertainTeed ToughGard Duct Liner.
The duct liner posts a noise-reduction coefficient of 1.0 and an R-value of 8.3. The fiberglass liner works primarily as acoustical insulation in HVAC sheet-metal ducts to absorb unwanted crosstalk, equipment, and air-rush noise. Managers can use the product in most types of heating and cooling duct systems, operating at velocities of up to 6,000 feet per minute and temperatures up to 250 degrees. ToughGard also provides moisture and mold resistance and is 40 percent more water repellant than standard duct liners.
The Lindenwood project called for 30,000 square feet of Type 150 2-inch liner and 15,000 square feet of Type 150 1-inch liner. The contractor began duct fabrication in 2007, and the entire facility is supposed to be completed by summer 2008.
The 138,000-square-foot building will feature: a 1,200-seat main auditorium for theatrical, music, and dance productions; a gallery for student art exhibits; large- and medium-sized classrooms; a 175-seat black-box theater; music practice rooms; a fashion-design studio; a production-design studio; a high-tech video suite; dance/movement studios; and vocal and instrumental music halls.
“ToughGard Duct Liner is an excellent choice for this project because it not only provides the superior sound absorption that theaters require, but also the thermal efficiency and protection from moisture and the mold growth that often results from it,” says Renee Chesler, general manager of CertainTeed’s mechanical-insulation business. “We believe that Lindenwood University, as well as the future audiences at its new performing arts center, will be quite happy with the sound environment ToughGard helps create.”
