Revenge for moving’upper house’?…well ceiling to reduce noise conflict between floors

The controversy over the inter-floor noise raised by comedians Lee Hwi-jae and Moon Jung-won has led to singer Psy (real name Park Jae-sang), comedian Ahn Sang-tae, and Lee Jung-soo. The Ministry of Health and Welfare posted a promotional video for’Zipcock Dance’ on the 1st and apologized after being beaten by public opinion.

The inter-floor noise problem was not yesterday and today, but the conflict has become even more serious as the time to live at home increased due to Corona 19. According to the Korea Environment Corporation on the 19th, the number of civil complaints related to interfloor noise last year was 895, an increase of about 80% compared to 2019 (507). The number of on-site diagnosis requests to visit the conflict site and resolve the damage case increased from 267 to 355.

Floor noise victims complain of pain that they have entered the stage of’Corona Red’ where they feel anger beyond’Corona Blue’. Hamo, 34, living in Dohwa-dong, Mapo-gu, said, “After I started working from home, I could hear the interior construction noise of neighbors, footsteps running around children, the sound of putting down dumbbells, and even a cell phone alarm every 6 o’clock in the morning. I did it, but I understood why the inter-floor noise knives incident occurred in the blatant attitude that (the source of the noise) was not my own house.”
Eventually, products for revenge appeared in the Internet community. In the revenge story that a woofer speaker (woofer speaker) was installed on the ceiling to cause noise deliberately, there was a comment saying’it’s cool.’ On YouTube, a video of retaliation after moving to a house above the house that caused inter-floor noise hit 5.38 million times in two years.

The reason that even private retaliation has emerged is that there are no laws to punish perpetrators of floor noise. In 2016, the’rules on noise standards between floors of apartments’ were implemented, but only the range and standards of noise were set, and there is no compulsory punishment for exceeding the standards. It is possible to apply for mediation to the Multi-family Housing Management Dispute Mediation Committee and the Environmental Dispute Mediation Committee, but the recommended or requested measures are all. The’post-floor noise confirmation system’ introduced by the government in 2022 also checks whether noise can be blocked, but there is no mandatory.

However, even with penalties, it is difficult to determine the source of noise in the apartment. This is because it is common for the noise of several houses to overlap in multiples, and it is difficult to prove that the house caused the noise even when the epicenter was found.

In the construction industry, eventually, the development of technology to block noise between floors is the first button to solve the problem. Currently, most houses in Korea have wall-type structures. A wall-type structure is a building structure made of walls or floors without frames such as pillars and beams, and noise is transmitted through the walls, resulting in more severe inter-floor noise. On the other hand, in the columnar structure, the columns and beams support the building load and noise is distributed to the columns.

The problem is that columnar housings are not preferred by the building industry because of their businessability compared to wall structures. This is because the number of furniture per apartment decreases because the ceiling height needs to be increased in the case of a column structure.

Accordingly, the construction industry is concentrating on the development of technologies that can be applied in the construction and construction stages. Samsung C&T recently established an interfloor noise research center for the first time in the construction industry. The causes of interfloor noise, construction materials, apartment structures, and new construction methods are comprehensively covered. Director Kim Jae-ho said, “In the future, we will complement the performance of our own developed floor structure system, apply a noise-reducing well ceiling (a hollow ceiling), and develop a dry floor technology in the form of a floating floor (a floor supported by putting rubber or cotton). “We plan to apply these to construction sites.”

Hyundai E&C will apply the interfloor noise reduction technology’H Silent Home’ from this year. 15 technologies such as reinforcing the stiffness of slabs (flat steel structures), which Hyundai E&C has a patent right, and quality control of frame construction through laser scanning, are applied. DL E&C (formerly Daelim Industrial) applied for a patent last year for developing a floor structure that can catch inter-floor noise in three layers. It is a construction method designed by analyzing the impact pattern of the footsteps of adults and children on the floor.

Building material companies have also started developing flooring products. LG Hausys’ recently introduced’XComfort’ flooring is effective in reducing noise as it is composed of two layers, a soft upper layer and an elastic hard lower layer. In fact, as a result of the light-weight impact floor sound reduction test conducted by the Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Equipment Research Institute, it was confirmed that there is a reduction effect of about 20 decibels (dB) compared to a bare floor with a thickness of 150 mm.

Reporter Bae Jeong-won [email protected]