Which ia a better noise barrier?

Re: Which ia a better noise barrier?

• SURFERxGIRL

  

  member

  November 2013

  My mother has a large yard with just a fence and and a couple of years ago a road was built behind her house. It's a fairly busy road and the fence doesn't really keep the sound out at all. Her HOA requires all houses to have the same 6' tall fence on any side that faces a road, but you can still hear the cars going by all the time now.
  
  DH and I are planning on planting some type of evergreen fence along the back of our property line to try and block out some noise, but I'm not entirely sure if it will be more effective than a fence. I hope it is though!
   
  One thing I would suggest is to double check any HOA or county regulations--some places are very specific about what you can and can't do, especially if it is something that can be viewed from the road.
  

  ?Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.?

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• ~NB~

  

  member

  December 2013

  Neither a 6' residential fence, nor a row of evergreens, is effective at noise reduction. Not alone, and not together. If you're within 50' of a highway, it won't reduce the noise by a single decibel.

  Sound barriers have to be taller than the sound waves and significantly wider too. They also have to have sufficient mass to muffle sound, and that varies by how close you are to the source.

  This has been studied extensively, and the result is very specific construction specifications for sound barriers, the kind you see along highways. They are huge and unattractive, and extremely expensive to build, but they are the ONLY thing that works. If cities could get away with smaller, cheaper sound barriers, such as a 6' wood fence or a row of arborvitae, they would.

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