A case study of residential waste plumbing noise control

Home renovations occasionally include the optimization of the residential layout by changing the use of the original rooms to different uses. A recent residential renovation involved changing a top floor bedroom into a full bathroom to provide the homeowners with a toilet and shower closer to the bedrooms on the upper floor of the residence. With this change, a new toilet on the upper floor was located over a portion of a kitchen ceiling on the lower floor below, raising the concern for fluid flow noise in the kitchen when the toilet was flushed. This paper will review the laboratory testing of pipe noise, conditions associated with plumbing of this case study, the noise control approach that was implemented, and measurements of the mitigation at different times prior to the final result.