The Importance of Soundproofing Warehouses
Whether it’s communication with customers or communication between team members, the key to any successful business is communication. That is especially true on warehouse and factory floors.
The combination of heavy machinery and large quantities of products can make verbal communication difficult at best and dangerously absent at worse. To ensure safety and efficiency, soundproofing warehouses is a great step you can take.
Soundproofing means the prevention of sound going from one space to another. Sound absorption means using materials to reduce echo and reverberations within an area. It is important to note that the term soundproofing is often misconstrued. Sometimes people assume you can go around soundproofing industrial machines, but that isn’t necessarily what soundproofing is.
It isn’t something you can do one by one, machine by machine. When people say soundproofing, they generally mean a combination of soundproofing and sound absorption.
When looking to improve a large workspace such as a warehouse, this combination is exactly what they are looking for.
Why Soundproof Your Warehouse?
By their very nature, warehouses are noisy. They are full of hard surfaces and sharp angles with loud engines. But all that noise can be managed. The benefits of noise control in a large workspace are numerous. From improving relationships with neighbors to protecting your workforce, controlling the acoustical makeup of your facility is a smart choice.
Soundproofing warehouse – Protecting Your Team
When making considerations for workplace safety, most people would not think about the sonic environment of a workspace. But sound plays a large part in workplace safety. Warehouse noise reduction facilitates better communication between team members on the floor when heavy materials are being moved—thus preventing potential workplace accidents or keeping them from being worse. According to OSHA, loud noises can increase the chance of workplace accidents by making it more difficult to hear warnings of danger.
Soundproofing warehouses also provides long-term protection for your workers’ hearing. Even with some personal hearing protection such as earplugs, exposure to loud noises can irreparably damage hearing over time—OSHA lists permanent tinnitus and total hearing loss as some of the dangers of persistent loud noises. Between conveyors, forklifts, and all the hard, sonically reflective surfaces amplifying and reverberating every noise all shift long, every day, your team’s hearing will suffer over time. Taking steps today can improve your workers’ professional and personal lives in the present and the future.
Protecting Your Work
Not every job in a warehouse is on the warehouse floor. Administrative duties and logistics work often take place in offices in the same building. Preventing sound from bleeding into the office areas from the work floor allows your office staff to better focus on their work. It also protects their hearing since it’s unlikely your administrative staff will have the same ear protection as your warehouse staff—especially since talking on the phone is likely a large part of their job.
Controlling the sound in your business allows for increased productivity. Ease of communication on the warehouse floor means more can get done and reduced noise in administrative areas allows those team members to retain their focus and talk on the phone without the need to repeat themselves constantly.
Protecting Your Reputation
Depending on where your warehouse is located, you may have neighbors in different industries or you may even have a location that connects to a residential neighborhood. Constant noise complaints will affect your reputation locally as a member of your community and, thanks to the easy spread of information in the age of social media, may even reflect poorly on you to potential clients. A few simple measures toward outdoor soundproofing can go a long way to address these potential issues. Cleaning up the sound that could bleed into the areas around your warehouse can reflect very well on you locally and globally.
How to Improve The Sound Quality in the warehouse?
Improving the sound in and around your warehouse requires a two-pronged solution—sound absorption and soundproofing. The absorption will address issues within your warehouse. The soundproofing will address issues outside the warehouse floor. By investing in the right materials and taking the time to install them properly, the benefits will become clear quickly.
How to reduce echo in the warehouse?
All the hard surfaces in a warehouse create echos that pile on top of each other in a giant sonic mess. This is why it is important to know how to reduce echo in a warehouse. Installing warehouse acoustic panels will reduce those echos on a large scale. The result of this sound absorption is an environment in which your workers can communicate with each other with significantly more ease. Taking away echo means there is less sound to compete with when relaying information.
Maximizing available space on walls and the ceiling of your warehouse to absorb sound is the key. There are several products that will improve the sound quality of your work floor. Once you know how to reduce echo and where you can install, for example, hanging baffles, sound absorption is simple.
Soundproofing Warehouse
Soundproofing industrial buildings can be a bit more difficult but are well worth it. Soundproofing means keeping sound from going from one space to another if you recall. Doors, windows, and spaces inside walls can all be avenues for sound bleed. Incorporating acoustical doors and windows is the first step to take to soundproof your facility. When it comes to soundproofing other avenues for sound bleed, remember that installing acoustic panels will reduce the echo within your warehouse, but that isn’t really soundproofing.
You need to use industrial soundproofing panels, which are often much denser and made of different materials than sound absorption tools. These materials can be laid over floors, ceilings, or walls, but are often most effective when they are fully integrated into the framework of your building. Additionally, you may also reinforce soundproofing/absorbing efforts by utilizing exterior sound absorbing panels. This will ensure that you are maximizing your efforts to take care of not only your employees but also your neighbors.
To soundproof your administrative areas, installing sound blocking ceiling panels and insulating the walls with dense materials designed to prevent sound bleed will work wonders. Checking the seal on windows and doors is also important. If air can get through, so can sound. Talk to a knowledgeable consultant about the steps you can take. They may be simpler actions than you expect.
Sound Actions
Soundproofing warehouse isn’t as simple as soundproofing machinery. But it also isn’t as complicated as making your entire warehouse as quiet as a recording studio. It is a process of absorbing excess echo and preventing sound from going where you don’t want it.
With the right materials installed properly and strategically, the sound in your warehouse will improve dramatically in a short time. Reach out to an expert today and get ready to hear reports of better productivity and a safer, healthier workforce.
1 Comment
Patrick Crowe
Hello. I have a 50,000 Sq ft warehouse. I am sub-leasing 5000 Sq ft. The machinery the sub-leaser is using is loud. What would you recommend to use for a sound proof barrier that goes approximately 30-40 feet high? As close to the ceiling as possible. Thanks!