Background:
Southside High School, proud home of the Seahawks, in Beaufort County, NC is a school of approximately 450 students in grades 9-12 serving the towns of Chocowinity and Aurora, NC.
The school was founded in 2000 and as beautiful as the school was they knew they had a noise problem with their gymnasium. Their gymnasium is very large measuring out at 104’ x 120’ with a tall A frame ceiling. In the gymnasium all of the surfaces were hard including painted concrete block walls and a metal ceiling deck. It was very difficult for the physical education teacher to be able to communicate or talk with the class as the reverberation time within the space was above 6 seconds. It was also an issue when the volleyball and basketball teams played in the gymnasium and the bleachers were full of family and friends that were forced to talk over top of one another to be heard.
After living with the problem for a number of years, money to fix the problem was added to the school budget in 2016. The school then contacted Sound Seal in search of an answer to this acoustical issue that would fix their problem and keep them on budget.
Solution:
After a visit to the school, Sound Seal determined that the best solution to the problem would be to add acoustical treatment to both the walls and ceiling as all the surfaces in the room were currently highly reflective. Sound Seal’s SR-100 or Semi-Rigid baffles and wall panels were chosen because of the economical value that they offered combined with the high acoustical ratings, NRC 1.10, and the variety of colors that they came in. The SR-100 Baffles are a 2” thick baffle, with a 2 pound per cubic foot fiberglass core that is then stitched into a very durable PVC covering and installed via grommets.
In total (324) 48” x 24” ceiling baffles were installed, color white was chosen so that they would blend in with the existing white ceiling and not be distracting. An additional (19) 48” x 96” wall panels were installed above the bleachers, color green was chosen for these to match the bleachers as well as the school colors.
After the installation was complete the reverberation time (RT60) within the gymnasium was dropped from just over 6 seconds to just under 2 seconds. This improvement was happily noted by all of the staff and students that used the facility on a daily basis.