Noise from water installations: measurement problems in residential buildings with heavy structures

Noise from water installations is often the most common cause of annoyance from service equipment in residential buildings. In this work a comparison between different measurement techniques is presented and different measurement problems are pointed out in relation to the characteristics of building structures. A comparison of measurement methods and results obtained using global levels (according to ISO 10052 Standard) and frequency band levels (according to ISO 16032 Standard) has been performed. In particular, background noise correction has been considered, highlighting problems of measurement reliability, specially at low frequencies. Other fields of investigation focus on the problems related to reverberation times measurement at low frequencies and the effectiveness of the use of C-weighted sound pressure level for the selection of the corner microphone position. Finally, consideration about standard deviation of repeated measurements has been carried out.