Episode #12 - Designing for Spaces - Dave Novak and Jason Ehrlich

Adam Hritzak

All right, thanks everybody for joining us for this episode. We have several interesting topics that will be on the list to cover and we're lucky to be able to be joined by Dave and Jason to have their expertise shared with us throughout today's conversation. So before we dive into the topics, let's just start with a quick introduction for you both. Dave, I'll turn this over to you first.

Dave Novak

Yeah, hi there. Thanks for having me. Dave Novak with the Ketchum and Walton Company. Just a little bit about us - we're an independent employee-owned company based out of central Ohio here in Columbus. And we have several offices here throughout the Northeast, and we're proud to represent and work with Kinetics Noise Control and all the Catalyst brand companies. And it's a great partnership.

A little bit about my experience - I'm an outside sales rep for architectural and acoustical solutions. I call directly on architects, designers, consultants, and engineers and help them try to make the best decisions possible on various types of projects. So I've got some experience, certainly in our marketplace and elsewhere. And we've had the benefit and fortune of working with some great customers and clients here in our territory.

Jason Ehrlich

Hi, my name is Jason Ehrlich with Kinetics Noise Control. If you're just now finding out about Kinetics, I think our biggest claim to fame is that we manufacture more different types of noise control products than any other manufacturer out there. I just hit my 25-year anniversary last month. A lot of that time was spent in our noise-control side of things, talking about noise-control floors, walls, and ceilings.

And my role there was to be the primary liaison between consultants, architects, contractors, reps, and our own draftsmen to make sure that the design got implemented. So was a wonderful, wonderful education. The last few, maybe five, eight years, I have done the educational role in business development. So I go out and do a lot of talks to architects through AIA and other educational efforts.

Adam Hritzak

All right, great, thanks a lot. So first up today, pivoting to our list of topics that we have here, let's talk about the need for architects and designers to not only focus just on aesthetics, but also the experience in the space over.

Dave Novak

Yeah, this is a great talking point and this is something that I touch on when I get involved with Lunch and Learns. Really, the messaging here from our perspective is that as an architect and designer approaching various types of projects, we often see them designing for the eyes but not designing for the ears.

We ultimately want to change that mindset and have people focusing not only just designing for our eyes, designing for our ears, and designing for all our senses. The ears seem to be one sense that gets overlooked on various projects. And we look forward to talking more about those types of projects here as we go further onto the podcast. But really, again, shift in mindset and your approach on projects is something that's certainly important in our mind.

Jason Ehrlich

Yeah, I think there's definitely been a push in the last few years, I think brought upon by a building code requiring noise control for multifamily. And so I think the design group has never been more engaged. But now I kind of feel we need to tweak that so that they're understanding that more different types of projects require noise treatment and abatement. And then even fine-tuning that.

A different degree because I think we've got the word out there but as Dave was kind of saying we need to kind of tune that in so that that room is actually functioning the way it should acoustic.

Dave Novak

Yeah, and this is something that I encourage A&D to engage with their clients when they're designing a project and talk about the acoustic expectations. How do you want the space to look? How do you want the space to feel? Do you want to hear noise? Do you want to hear no noise? Because there's in a building, there's a couple of a few things that make noise. It's people, it's mechanical equipment, and it's outside noise coming in.

If we think about that from our design approach and certainly understand what the needs are of the specific business segments or the users in the building, we can make decisions on how to make them more comfortable.

Adam Hritzak

All right, great. You know, another thing here, just thinking about this, what are some key considerations you think are important for designing with sound control in mind?

Dave Novak

Well, I think back to the drawing board is who are we designing it for and how will the space be used? And I use like, I was recently at the doctor's office and multiple exam rooms, the place is a factory, there's probably 12, 15 exam rooms and I'm in one exam room and.

I can hear the doctor talking to the patient in the room next to me. So right there is a prime example of understanding what the needs are of the business, understanding what privacy means, understanding what crosstalk means and how can we deal with that accordingly. In healthcare, there's certainly HIPAA privacy laws that that are in place to protect the patient's privacy, but that doesn't seem to get extended into the design and construction of private offices or private exam rooms. And we have to do a better job of educating the design teams on what options and solutions are available to treat that particular case.

Jason Ehrlich

I think to put a finer point on it, if you look at the example of houses of worship, you've got a lot of acoustic challenges there because you have speech that's involved in the sermon, but you also have music. But how you approach rock-style music is going to be very different than how you might approach traditional. So even that, that's where that feel really does matter. And we do have to know those things to tune that space properly because we can do that now.

Dave Novak

Yeah, and we're starting to see a shift of more spaces are reverting to contemporary worship. And what does that mean? Well, that means a full drummer, live band, and low frequencies, long wavelengths. And we can certainly deal with that. We can treat the space, but people are converting more traditional warship spaces into contemporary. And that's creating an opportunity for the acoustics market. But some of these spaces are large gyms.

They are maybe their community spaces, maybe it's their, again, their traditional worship space being transitioned over. And Kinetics has a great suite of products to help tune that space. And again, engaging in a rep and talking to a rep or a consultant when you're designing these spaces is certainly important.

Adam Hritzak

And to follow up on that, you guys really explained a lot about the space and how different people can be impacted by those considerations. But what are some things to consider when you think about the wall construction and materials overall as well?

Dave Novak

Yeah, I think let's we can talk about the worship space for a moment there in we take a step back to what the primary business responsibility is to send the message and spread the word and if we have a really highly reflective room and acoustic acoustically reflective high reverberation time people aren't going to hear the message isn't going to get out the spoken words not going to be heard.

So, the application of proper acoustic finishes will give us speech intelligibility, will give us music clarity, and ultimately create a great experience for all the users in there.

Jason Ehrlich

I think too, you get into wall construction on that, it's critical to get that construction right in the planning stages. To do high-performance noise control requires extra space and it's really expensive to come back in and add it later. And I know one mistake I see a lot is a lot of architects and designers will specify wall to ceiling absorption in a noisy mechanical room. Absorption does very little to stop that noise from going through, that's really treating the reverb in that space. It doesn't stop the noise from going through. So, it's critical to understand what the concerns are and then applying it properly.

Dave Novak

Yeah, absolutely. Knowing your sources up front and applying a solution that's going to block sound. I see that quite a bit in mechanical rooms. You walk in there and floor-to-ceiling acoustic treatments and you can't help but chuckle little bit, but they tried and they didn't have a resource to reach out to and to support their decision-making.

Jason Ehrlich

I always say the maintenance person really appreciates that, if the maintenance person is in there, the machinery is probably not even running anyway.

Adam Hritzak

Dave, you brought up something earlier that I think is interesting and hopefully we can expand on that a bit. Obviously, different project sizes will matter in terms of what's available and resources available, but what are your thoughts about how to best utilize experts throughout the process?

Dave Novak

Well, engaging with an expert early on is going to be the best approach. If the project has the budget.

I would suggest reaching out to a consultant to help them make the best decisions. we find ourselves, and there's a lot of markets throughout the country that aren't consultant rich. And we'll just say on Ohio, for example, there's not a lot of acoustical consultants here. There's a few we get leaned on quite a bit for project advice.

What should I do in this situation? What should I do in that situation? And thankfully we've been involved in so many projects over the years. We know what works, we know how it works, we know what products to apply, and we can be that resource, but not everybody has a good rep in their backyard, so to speak. again, engaging in people, identifying those noise sources early, and coming up with an action plan to deal with them accordingly is always the best approach.

Jason Ehrlich

I think Dave hit it on the head. One of my lines is, you know, dog kennels need acoustic treatment, as do performing arts centers. Dog kennels are going to be a little bit easier to handle with some pretty basic stuff, where performing arts, maybe that's where you definitely want to bring in a consultant. But anywhere in between, they don't always have the budget for it. I know Dave, as well as Kinetics, we are happy to provide a reverberation report, which is the beginning of the conversation, definitely not the end. Performing Archie's definitely should be talking to a consultant, but anything under that, running that reverb or we'll give you an idea of just what the situation is, how bad it is, and then we can start talking about different ways to treat it.

Dave Novak

Yeah, see from my day-to-day over the last several years, I see a lot of poor decisions being made with regards to wall construction. So sound transmission from room to room. And that's something that really is quite frustrating. people love to, I should say architects, love to build a standard wall with three-inch metal studs, one layer of five-eighths drywall on each side, maybe some insulation in the middle and call it a day. Well, that's a very low-performing wall construction. That's in the low forties and you can hear speech, you can hear music directly through transmit through that wall construction or that wall type.

And that's something that again, it's quite frustrating because I see that everywhere and I see that in doctor's offices. I see that in co-working spaces. I see that in police station interrogation rooms, even classrooms, various private offices, and people expect that wall to perform at a high level and because it's everywhere. And unfortunately, there's, it's not the greatest wall assembly ever. And one of the things that I kind of... kind of always revert to is the Kinetics IsoMax Clip because it's really allowing them to hit the easy button when it comes to wall construction.

You can take a 40 wall to a 57 very simply by adding an isolation clip with some furring channel on a layer of drywall and you have a perfectly decoupled isolated wall. You start building up that assembly, maybe you go to two layers, you take that into the 60s and the transmission loss increases from there there's not an easier solution to increase your STC rating of a wall assembly by using the IsoMax clip and that's something that that we go to all the time. And people don't realize how easy it is to use such a product and it's practically foolproof.

Jason Ehrlich

Reminds me, Dave, of one of my favorite stories. You and I met out on the east side of Columbus in someone's apartment. We met with the architect and the contractor, there was some music playing on the other side of the wall. And right there on the table were the art drawings that it said STC 50 wall. And as soon as that music came on, the architect just put his hand in his face and was just shaking his head. And we had to explain that they probably had a 50.

50 is not very good. They thought they were doing the right thing, they really, really did, but they didn't use the IsoMax clip. I love telling that story because they did try to do the right thing, they just didn't understand it. Just because it's code doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be functional for the particular environment that they're building it in.

Dave Novak

Yeah, yeah, it's, I feel like maybe, maybe some architects are just, just not familiar with the technology and how easy it is to apply. And they just, they go to a standard wall construction. But we just have to be better at educating the team and informing them of how, how simple it is and how cost-effective it is.

It doesn't add much of a dollar per square foot to the wall construction by any means.

Adam Hritzak

Dave, earlier you mentioned about action items to consider coming from this. And I'm curious just to get both your thoughts here on what you think some real key calls to action would be to architects and designers based on some of the topics we covered today or maybe other items that we haven't gone in-depth about.

Dave Novak

Yeah, from a call to action, really get to know, get to know your acoustical sales reps in your in your market and get educated by them and build some trust and work with them on projects and get to get to know them on every project. I think is a key call to action. Use their expertise. I tell them all the time, lean on me, call me anytime.

We'll help you make the right decisions. We'll help you get on the right track. And it's just not me trying to sell you a product. I'm trying to be a true partner. And that's the way we approach every project is by being a partner. If there's a better way to do it, if there's another product or solution that could potentially be used, I'll help you get there. And I won't be afraid to tell you that but develop relationships with your reps in your territories is one of the most important things.

Jason Ehrlich

Think my big one is maybe examine your comfort space. I'm on a personal mission to talk about the NRC standard. When I go out and talk to architects, they're all very, very comfortable with NRC. And if you're not familiar, it's basically a measurement of how well a product absorbs different sound.

The problem with it is it's really only designed for speech frequencies. It's not really designed to talk about music. And I think that architects are very comfortable with NRC and they just see a product out there and they think the higher the number is, the better it is. And it's really not true when it comes to doing things like treating things like music. In fact, adding those types of products can take all the high frequencies out of the space, leave behind the mid frequencies and low frequencies, and actually make the room sound worse. Again, they're trying to do the right thing. They think they understand that NRC is just a carry-all for all things acoustics.

And it really isn't. And I think that gets back to what Dave's been saying, know, reach out, talk to us, maybe examine, you know, where those thoughts are coming from within NRC because if there's music involved, you should not be looking at that standard more than likely.

Dave Novak

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, the NRC doesn't tell the whole story. Most architects and designers don't understand, you know the meaning of all that, or even an end user, and I was just recently on a project where it was a warship space and they called me and said we've tried acoustic panels and if they're not working and I visited the space.

And I saw about five acoustic panels on the wall. They're all about maybe a half-inch thick, four-by-four panels directly attached to the wall. we're talking about a 1,500-square-foot space. They immediately had the perception that the panels weren't working, but in fact, they did not have the right products, the right thickness, nor the right quantities. And that's where we can help steer you in the right direction because

If we're working on a worship space that has a full band, so to speak, those lower frequencies have longer wavelengths, and we need thicker materials to absorb those longer wavelengths.

Jason Ehrlich

And we've come up with newer products like our VTLF and Versatune where we can do a lot of different things with composite layups and not necessarily have to go to a four-inch thick panel. We can do things in less depending again, what's the space, what's the purpose of the space, what level are we trying to take the quality of the acoustics to.

Adam Hritzak

Alright, guys well thanks, I think that's super valuable for everybody. Just to pose this to both of you any other topics you'd like to address that we haven't touched on today or any closing thoughts to share with our listeners?

Dave Novak

Yeah, I would love to talk a little bit about speech privacy and crosstalk. And here's something that, that I run to run into every day as well. And, there's so many different applications out there. It's kind of hard to begin at one particular application or project type. But we talked earlier about multifamily residential spaces. There's a growing need for some additional education there as we start to, at least in our market, we have a lot of stick build, and the wood is all connected together as we know, it's all glued and screwed together, and sound transmits through these structures very easily. building code is not great either. It's STC-50, IIC-50. This is an application that I see quite overlooked all the time with basic wall construction.

Nothing, nothing upsets me more than going to a project or speaking with a homeowner that spent a lot of money on a space, on a unit, and they can hear the residents above us, below us, next to us.

The importance for proper wall, floor, and ceiling design and construction is very, very important in these spaces. So, you know, if you're an architect and designer, understand, try to understand these building code requirements, and reach out to a rep to help you make the proper decisions or even a consultant. I see a lot of co-working spaces. So they're popping up everywhere around here in these types of spaces, have that three-inch muddle stud that we're talking about between offices. The crosstalk and the speech, there's a lot of crosstalk, there's zero speech privacy, and these are spaces where people don't want to hear their neighbors. And what I'm seeing a lot of is this partial height wall construction, meaning the wall only goes up just beyond the acoustic ceiling type. Well, how do we deal with that?

Well, there's a great crosstalk product that we use quite a bit. It's the Kinetics QuietTile conventional acoustic ceiling tiles made to be acoustically transparent. The sound needs to travel through it. And what happens when you have offices next to each other is that you created a scenario with a partial height wall where the sound travels through the ceiling, up and over the wall, and into the adjacent space.

Again, great application for the QuietTile. We also have to be aware of our supply and return air. And Kinetics has silencers that can deal with your return air openings. And maybe in this application too, we can add the IsoMax clip to the wall to increase the transmission loss of the wall to give you some further privacy between rooms.

Those applications along with doctor's office, exam rooms, even classrooms, we need to pay more attention to STC ratings and those types of specifications when we are designing and developing projects.

Jason Ehrlich

Yeah, I think my little add-on would be, you when we talk about STC, we talk about IIC, which I find architects to be less familiar with. While they're getting comfortable with those things, I think they go online to our website. We have a great library of tests and they just see an assembly and they say, well, that's an STC 55. That meets code. I'm going to put it in without understanding how sound can flank around it in the walls, which is a big concern.

Believe it or not, it's actually part of building code in parts of Canada, just not for some reason in the United States. Well, if you don't treat that noise and it can move through the wall around your sound assembly, you can devastate the performance of that assembly. So I think that's something else to keep in mind. I think we've done a good job educating on what STC is. I don't know that we've done a good job saying there are certain rules you have to do to make sure you maintain what that assembly will perform like.

Dave Novak

Yeah, and I agree too. You talked about NRC doesn't tell the whole story. IIC doesn't tell the whole story as well and you know below 250 Hertz. So, I think there's a lot of acousticians out there that want to see the testing maybe changed or tweaked slightly to account for some of those lower frequencies. But you're right, IIC doesn't get brought up much, but it is equally important to STC in those types of spaces.

Adam Hritzak

All right, great. Thanks guys. I appreciate that. And thanks for sharing your thoughts and recommendations and experiences and everything. I think it's going to be really valuable for our audience today. So, thanks a lot.