Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announces proposed revision to floor-impact sound insulation standards
Inter-floor noise standards for non-apartment buildings such as multi-family homes and officetels will be tightened to match those applied to apartments and other multi-unit residential buildings.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it will announce a proposed revision to the "structural standards for floor-impact sound insulation for noise prevention" on Friday, targeting multi-family homes, residential buildings with fewer than 30 units, and officetels, with the aim of reducing inter-floor noise and improving living conditions.
The core of the revision is to raise floor-impact sound insulation requirements for buildings governed by the Building Act, which have until now been held to lower standards than those under the Housing Act, while also updating quality and construction management requirements for cushioning materials.
Both heavy-impact and light-impact sound levels would be required to stay at or below 49 decibels. Under current rules, heavy-impact sound — the kind produced by heel-strike walking — must not exceed 50 decibels, while light-impact sound from small, hard objects dropping is capped at 58 decibels.
The ministry will also establish new standard floor structures to meet the tightened requirements, along with quality criteria to ensure that shock-absorbing cushioning materials used in those structures perform at or above a set level.
To ease the burden on building owners, the existing system allowing builders to choose between a certified floor structure and a standard floor structure will be retained.
The certified floor structure option allows the use of a variety of designs and construction methods that have passed performance testing, while the standard floor structure option eliminates the need for separate performance testing as long as construction follows the prescribed specifications.
The ministry said it plans to strengthen floor-impact sound insulation performance while allowing builders to select the floor structure best suited to the characteristics and conditions of each building.
"This revision will help improve living conditions in multi-family homes and officetels, which have until now been relatively vulnerable to floor-impact noise," said Lee Jin-cheol, director general for building policy at the ministry. "We will continue to refine the relevant regulations to create a comfortable living environment that people can genuinely feel."
Meanwhile, apartments and other multi-unit residential buildings under the Housing Act have been subject to a 49-decibel cap on both light- and heavy-impact sound since August 2022, along with a post-construction performance verification system. The ministry's push to revise the standards is a move to minimize complaints and incidents stemming from inter-floor noise in non-apartment buildings governed by the Building Act, where requirements had lagged behind.
smh@heraldcorp.com
