The latest whisper in the housing industry: Silence sells. Buyers want their homes to be a refuge from the ever-rising din that is the soundtrack to modern life.
“When you come home from a hard, stressful day at the office, you’re just not ready for a lot of noise,” says Mark Buss, merchandising vice president for Maytag Corp.’s Jenn-Air/Magic Chef unit. “People want to relax.”
That’s hard to do in many existing homes. As outside decibel levels climb, the walls of American houses have gotten thinner. Homes and townhouses are clustered together more densely than in the past, compounding the stress that makes people more sensitive to noise. And, as home prices have risen, so have buyers’ expectations: Rattles and squeaks are often associated with shoddy construction, while quiet “gives the perception of more quality,” says Philip Hove, a Newport Beach, Calif., architect.
The result is a new quest for quiet that is changing home construction and design and muffling the whining engines of appliances. Demand is especially strong at the high end of the market, where noise can threaten a buyer’s investment in a home office, media room or home theater.
“If you have $50,000 to $100,000 of equipment, and you are watching movie-theater-quality picture and sound, you don’t want to hear a car go by or a plane fly overhead,” says Charles M. Salter, an acoustical engineer whose San Francisco firm charges up to $155 an hour to diagnose and solve home noise problems.
Average homeowners want quiet, too. Owens Corning Fiberglas Corp. found a majority of consumers it surveyed willing to pay an extra $500 to add soundproofing to their homes. “We’re looking at the whole acoustical market as a great opportunity for us,” says James G. Schmiedeskamp, marketing communications manager.
At the recent National Association of Home Builders convention, Owens Corning rolled out QuietZone acoustical batting, its first insulation product marketed expressly to curb interior noise. The company promoted the sound-stifling value of its products in its first-ever Super Bowl commercial this year.
Some builders are striving to make even lower-priced homes quieter. Waterford Homes of west suburban Batavia, recently used concrete blocks in the walls dividing $150,000-and-under townhouse units. It uses the same technique, which costs an extra $3,000 per unit, in town homes costing nearly twice as much. “We were concerned about our image,” says Robert Nelson, president.
Still, there are limits to home noise abatement. Easy-to-install gypsum board is here to stay, even though it absorbs less sound than the inch-thick plaster walls typical of homes built before World War II. Old-fashioned cast-iron plumbing pipes were denser — and thus quieter — than the plastic pipes used today. Some builders still put in cast-iron pipe for certain uses, while many others, like PTL Custom Homes Inc. in Lambertville, Mich., heavily insulate plastic pipes to make gurgling and sloshing less audible.
Nor are buyers likely to forgo today’s popular open floor plans, which add considerably to the clatter. Kitchens that open onto dining areas and family rooms create a hubbub of appliances, televisions and stereo systems. So, to keep sound from bouncing around so freely, Coscan Davidson Homes in Del Mar, Calif., tries to vary ceiling heights and angle the walls in open areas, says William B. Probert, vice president of sales and marketing.
Like many builders, Coscan also is modifying upstairs flooring to cut down on squeaks. For floor joists, it uses pressed wood — a uniform, stable material that doesn’t shrink or twist like traditional cut lumber.
Though pressed wood joists cost about 30 percent more than lumber, they are now used in about 20 percent of new floors. Trus Joist MacMillan, a Boise limited partnership that makes the joists, says they save on labor costs and reduce homeowner complaints.
Reducing interior noise is a snap compared with blocking out the sounds of airplane and auto traffic, acoustics experts say. Double-paned windows, front porches and insulation don’t fully do the trick.
Noise Cancellation Technologies Inc. in Linthicum, Md., is working on “active” noise-reduction technology, which it says can actually push sound away rather than passively absorb it, as insulation does. So far, its sole consumer product is a $99 headset that reduces background noise. Eventually, it hopes to develop acoustic panels that could be affixed to windows to rebuff outside noise.
Appliances, especially dishwashers, are chief contributors to household din. When the dishwasher is turned on, “people flee; the kids can’t do their homework,” says Carolyn Verweyst, Whirlpool Corp.’s marketing communications manager.
Until recently, about the only solution was to buy a European dishwasher costing $800 and up. But in the past year, most U.S. manufacturers have introduced new, quieter models.
Jenn-Air has been selling its Ultimate Quiet brand since August; though it costs $50 more than other models, it’s already the company’s top seller. “For many years, the focus has been on making dishwashers that clean better,” says Jenn-Air’s Mr. Buss. Now, consumers assume they all clean reasonably well, he says, and “what has become a very important factor to the high end is quiet.”
Whirlpool introduced its Quiet Partner dishwasher last year. Four months ago it brought out a quieter washing machine, with padding inside the tub, more insulation in the cabinet walls, and a quieter drain hose. Whirlpool’s research shows that homemakers want laundry equipment near the kitchen, rather than in the basement. “They don’t want to hear a bunch of clatter,” Verweyst says.
Consumers do still demand a reassuring rumble from some appliances, to prove they’re doing the job. “That’s why vacuum cleaners will probably continue to remain noisy,” says Mr. Salter, the San Francisco engineer.
