I live in one of the loudest areas in the planet. I'm not exaggerating when I say without my noise cancelling headphones I would barely be able to do my job. It is also one of the main reasons I don't see myself working on site again.
Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
311–320 of 531 posts
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#312Why do we still have the beep, beep, beep when trucks back up? We have backup cameras now. Everyone within half a mile is continually alerted that there's a truck backing up or a piece of construction equipment moving.
This is one noise that I’m absolutely ok with them keeping for safety reasons.
I'm all for worker safety, but I'd like to see evidence that this beeping is actually an effective measure vs a less annoying sound or the use of back-up cameras??
Seriously, where is the evidence of accidents avoided? Vs other measures?
side note: had to live next to a construction site for 2 years. The beeping started in the morning at sunrise and ran for 12 hours straight.
And I'm wondering what it is like for construction workers; for the noise to provide a safety measure, they would have to pay attention to it. But that means it can't be a constant. Which it is.
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It runs 24/7 even though no one has been in the building during COVID. With modern buildings, where all windows and walls are completely airtight and there is no natural draft any more because of energy efficiency, the buildings would start to mold if you turned off the ventilation.
Could they maybe turn it down from 10pm to 7am? Or put some lube on the device?
> Could they maybe turn it down from 10pm to 7am?
They could, yes, but that depends on how much money the constructors spent. Some will go for the really fancy stuff that the janitor can fully control from their office, with everything relevant (air inlet and outlet temperature, tenant-individual air consumption, CO2 levels, ...) being measured and every tiny little actor (valves, bypasses, flaps) controlled in a carefully balanced flow that achieves optimal efficiency, while others will go for extremely dumb systems that offer little more control than "here's the circuit breaker, if you want more control you gotta climb to the roof and fiddle with the valves".
> Or put some lube on the device?
I doubt the problem is lube (unless it's actively creaking, and at that point the building management would be well advised to have the system inspected because that's a fire risk). Usually the problem is inadequate dimensions, caused (again) by financial decisions... basically, similar to a PC, the larger the fan the less RPM it needs to haul the same amount of air, and the less RPM it runs the quieter it is. Larger fan systems need more space (obviously) and are more expensive to purchase.
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
vehicles are make noise with the engine and wheels, so light electric vehicles are super quiet, but heavy vehicles tend to be loud regardless when moving fast
Electric cars are certainly far from silent, and somewhere at the high end of city speeds they are hard to distinguish from other cars because most of the sound comes from the tires. But subjectively I don't mind the tire noise nearly as much as the sound of an accelerating petrol engine.
It all sucks. High pitched tire wine, unbalanced thumps. Diesel engines are the worst.
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#315This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…
People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the US. Peaceful hike? Here's Katy Perry crackling out of my iPhone at full blast! Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation between units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes off. Small country street? Here comes Chad with his straight-piped civic with the muffler removed!
We call them "DJs without headphones" in Poland. They're [1] obnoxious in public transport. Now, I often considered speaking up, but figured out that if they're such a retard to do this, they probably won't listen and it could end up badly.
[1] Or maybe had been, seems they're on decline. Albeit when powerful BT speakers were all the rage (like JBL Flip), they were overused in public spaces as well.
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cities aren't inherently louder than countryside. Car traffic is noisy, but the volume is proportional to the speed. Cars going 30 km/h aren't THAT noisy. You don't hear them through the windows. Cars going 90 km/h are VERY noisy and at that point it doesn't matter if they are electric or not - you mostly hear the tires and the aerodynamics. Using car horns at cities is forbidden anyway, unless there's a crash or a d…
We moved to a townhouse 2km from the city centre after living 15km outside the city and the difference in noise is staggering. We had a mildly trafficked 70km/h road about 150m from our house (with a property in between) and the noise from that road was more or less constant. We could hear cars from almost a kilometre away over the open fields, so one car per minute meant almost constant noise. Now we live in a not-s…
That sounds great. I hate cars and traffic and trains.
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. That's hugely hyperbolic. But in the city there really are constant sirens, car horns, diesel trucks, construction noises, roadway noise etc... The most comprehensive study done on this (admittedly a long time ago in 1970) shows a clear correlation between po…
Cities aren't loud, cars (and trucks) are loud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 Video discusses this thoroughly. There ARE quiet cities amazingly enough. And suburbs are a HUGE source of the noise IN the cities they surround because it's the car traffic from suburbs into the cities that makes much of the noise. Cities ARE loud, but they don't HAVE to be.
It's funny how my brain reacts to all caps very similarly as if someone is literally shouting in front of me during a conversation. Must be the decades of internet forums and emails.
The first time you shouted my eye was twitching. By the third time I could almost feel a stroke coming from the increase in noise pollution.
Humans are so susceptible... pfff
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the US. Peaceful hike? Here's Katy Perry crackling out of my iPhone at full blast! Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation between units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes off. Small country street? Here comes Chad with his straight-piped civic with the muffler removed!
We call them "DJs without headphones" in Poland. They're [1] obnoxious in public transport. Now, I often considered speaking up, but figured out that if they're such a retard to do this, they probably won't listen and it could end up badly. [1] Or maybe had been, seems they're on decline. Albeit when powerful BT speakers were all the rage (like JBL Flip), they were overused in public spaces as well.
> I often considered speaking up, but
If you have to "slap"¹ someone, and you will have to least you live in the desert, you will have to learn how to do it and to do it properly - effectively, proportionately, optimally. If you don't, then it's downfall in your quality of live and everyone else, and the environment and property value. It's the foundation of civilization to pull each other up towards civilized behaviour. Those areas in which reciprocal correction left way to "anything goes", I have seen, have decayed to rubble (and from heights).
(¹Yes, reference.)
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's banned in all Polish cities I've been to. And for a good reason. Half the problems with America seems to be lack of regulation and the assumption that it can't be changed :)
America fascinates me because half of the time things are functionally unregulated, and the other half of the time there's a law about Kinder Eggs and the exact height your lawn must be.
The HN demographics would regulate things to the point of absurdity if left to their own devices. In the US they only reach critical mass to do so in affluent suburbs, so you get stupid local laws about lawn height and other attempts at legislating conformity. Occasionally they get thrown a bone by the federal bureaucracies or legislators on some meaningless issue that nobody will care enough to oppose. This is how you get lawn darts and random food products effectively banned (not that lobbying doesn't also result in odd small things being banned too).
Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fucking loathe leaf blowers. I can tell what day of the week it is by which neighbor is going for an hour or two straight with the leaf blower. Get a damn rake!
Leaf blowers are the worst. Several cities in CA have banned them. I don't know why more haven't followed suit. There's a myth that groundskeeping is more costly without them, but the city of LA reported that costs didn't significantly increase after banning them.[1] [1] https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/08/21/redondo-beach-bans-le...
I live just north of NYC in suburbs and leaf blower bans are never enforced. Not worth the time of the town or the city to bother dealing with the rules they create. It stinks.