"Still Insufficient Noise Reduction Technology Between Floors"… LH Gathers Company-wide Efforts to Achieve Grade 1 by 2025

“It’s so quiet like this...” The sound insulation performance laboratory, built with a structure similar to an apartment, was buzzing with surprise. The noise that used to be loud from the upstairs disappeared instantly after laying down the noise reduction mat. After listening carefully for a while, only faint noises could be heard. Of course, this was limited to lightweight noises such as dragging chairs or dropping objects. Heavy noises like pounding footsteps were not significantly improved even with the noise reduction mat, indicating that further research and development are needed.

On the 18th, we visited the Housing Performance Research and Development Center (HERI) of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) Land and Housing Research Institute located in Sejong City to experience the sound insulation performance laboratory and other facilities where LH is researching ways to reduce noise between floors.

An outdoor view of the sound insulation performance laboratory for measuring inter-floor noise installed at the Housing Performance Research and Development Center (HERI). An object is being dropped to measure noise.
[Photo by LH]

HERI is a national research facility jointly invested with 33.2 billion KRW by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and LH in 2018 to solve five major issues that persistently occur in apartments: noise between floors, fine dust, indoor pollution, condensation, and water leakage. It was built on a 19,685㎡ site with a total floor area of 11,074㎡, consisting of research office buildings, research experiment buildings, a CV (cross-ventilation simulator) building, and a demonstration experiment building.

This facility houses over 145 types of the latest research equipment for research, development, and certification testing in housing performance fields closely related to daily life, such as the world’s largest cross-ventilation simulator, noise and vibration, indoor air quality, ventilation and airtightness, condensation, water leakage and waterproofing, and external insulation systems.

Currently, HERI’s top priority task is the development of technology to reduce noise between floors. Although they have developed noise reduction mats through in-house development, these are only highly effective for lightweight noise and have not shown significant results for heavy noise, which is the biggest problem in noise between floors.

Accordingly, LH is actively developing floor structures that reduce noise between floors with high field applicability in collaboration with the private sector. They have set a goal to introduce first-grade noise reduction design for floors in the field by 2025, including the development of new floor structures with high field applicability for noise reduction between floors.

LH is mobilizing the entire organization to solve noise between floors. Earlier this year, they established the ‘National Housing Innovation Office,’ a control tower directly under LH President Lee Han-jun, and formed a task force team (four divisions, 26 departments) dedicated to improving noise between floors and innovating housing quality, creating an enterprise-wide execution system.

Additionally, they selected the Yangju Hoecheon Happy Housing complex (880 units, scheduled for completion in September), where excellent noise reduction technologies were applied, as the first pilot complex to operate a post-verification system on a trial basis. The second and third pilot complexes will be selected sequentially to supplement operational issues and discover and share best practices.

Furthermore, LH plans to gradually expand the pilot application of the LH-type composite structure (LHSP structure), which combines a noise-resistant frame structure and wall structure, and to immediately improve noise performance by raising the floor thickness standard (from 21cm to 25cm), prioritizing its application in the government’s core housing policy, New Home.

For existing housing, additional support measures linked to the government’s noise reduction mat support project will be prepared, and various reinforcement technologies for noise reduction between floors will continue to be discovered through collaboration with specialized institutions.

LH is also actively engaging in the development of excellent noise reduction technologies through active collaboration and mutual exchange with the private sector. In March, they signed a technology cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) with seven private construction companies and plan to develop universal and high-performance technologies that stably implement noise reduction performance between floors and share them with small and medium-sized construction companies.

Moreover, they will establish the ‘LH Technology Innovation Testing Facility (tentative name),’ a testbed where new technologies and new materials can be tested through various structures and floor thicknesses.

Kim Su-jin, head of the National Housing Innovation Office, said, “Noise between floors has long been a representative inconvenience for the public, and now is the time for active problem-solving. LH will take the lead in gathering all organizational capabilities to reduce the stress caused by noise between floors for the public.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.