What is a "sone and how does it relate to home construction?"

Q:

What is a "sone and how does it relate to home construction?"

A:
A unit of subjective loudness, equal to 40 decibels. An average refrigerator chugs along at 2 sones, a good bathroom fan at about 1.5, an average office is typically 3 sones and the volume from a TV is around 4 sones. Two sones are twice as loud as one; three sones are twice as loud as two, and so on and so forth.

When you are shopping for a new exhaust fan for your bathroom sones are the way that manufacturers rate their fan to tell you how quiet it is when it is running. The less sones that the fan is rated, the less noise that the fan will operate at. This is important because this is one of the biggest complaints to contractors from clients in a new bathroom, the noise of the bathroom fan when it is running.

If you look at the amount of things that move air in your home it is quite a few and when you move air you create noise.

Here is a list of things in the average custom home that move air and make noise;

• Ceiling fans.

• Kitchen exhaust hood.

• Bathroom exhaust fans.

• Furnace.

• Forced air fans on fireplaces.

• Space heaters.

• Make up air kits for furnaces

• HRVS

With all or most of these things in every custom home and a lot of times more than one of them (ceiling fans) being conscious of the amount of noise they make will help you reduce the overall white noise in the home.

The less white noise the quieter the home and the more enjoyable the living experience will be.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.