What the Floor Podcast

Mic check, can you hear me in the back? Sound Abatement 101

November 28, 2022 Holiday Van Erem & Michael Goria Season 1 Episode 8
What the Floor Podcast
Mic check, can you hear me in the back? Sound Abatement 101
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

On this episode of the What the Floor Podcast, we cover a topic that has been requested multiple times... sound abatement. What is it? What are IIC and STC ratings? Why do they matter, and how do you test for them? We had no idea…

So we spoke to an expert in the field, Daniel Mohler Acoustical Project Lead from Intertek and we learned so much!

What the Floor is a T&A Supply Company Inc original production. You can find out more about us at tasupply.com or tasflooring.com. This show is produced by Jose Morales with help from Toni Collier and Jessica Riser. Tell us what you think of the show at wtfpodcast@tasupply.com or #whatthefloorpodcast on social media to let us know what you think.

Holiday Van Erem:

This is What the Floor from T&A Supply Company Inc, a podcast for the flooring industry. I'm Holiday Van Erem.

Michael Goria:

I'm Michael Goria. We're going to explore the hot topics in the flooring industry, a little humor, and a new set of eyes.

Holiday Van Erem:

Good morning Michael.

Michael Goria:

Morning Holiday. How are you?

Holiday Van Erem:

I am tired. It's been, we've had all-day meetings the last couple days, and I've had crazy stuff going on at home and I'm just exhausted and ready for the weekend.

Michael Goria:

Well, it feels like that time of year. So let's, let's fire it up.

Holiday Van Erem:

So, very exciting episode today. I feel like we're gonna get schooled. That's how I'm feeling.

Michael Goria:

That's the goal.

Holiday Van Erem:

So we're focusing on sound abatement. That is a topic that comes up so often in conversations that we have with our customers. This is a daily basis, we have consumers that send in emails to our TAS flooring website asking for IIC ratings or STC ratings for their condo associations. And they don't even really understand why they're even asking or what documentation they want. And it's a really confusing conversation for most people that I talk to you. What's been your experience?

Michael Goria:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this has been our most requested podcast topic over the last several months. But we've been afraid to tackle it because neither of us are professionals on sound abatement.

Holiday Van Erem:

We are not experts.

Michael Goria:

But low and behold, we found the diamond in the rough.

Holiday Van Erem:

We were referred by one of our own internal members who overheard us having a conversation about trying to find an expert and she was like, "I know the guy". That's who we have with us today. Daniel from Intertek, can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, absolutely. I, my name is Daniel Molar. And I'm the project lead at Intertek in York, Pennsylvania. So I'm in charge of our vertical acoustical chamber. So I test everything floor ceiling related, that I've been at Intertek for coming up on 10 years, January will be 10 years. And I was hired right when we built this acoustical chamber here in York. So for every single test that was done here in York, I've been involved in that. And we have probably done 20,000 acoustical tests. So hopefully, I am that guy that can be your expert. But what I also do, I love sharing knowledge about this topic. So I'm super excited for the opportunity to chat with you guys. And yeah, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart and anytime I can talk about it. But when I start talking about sound abatement, my wife will occasionally her eyes will glaze over. But so I'm happy for the opportunity to talk to you guys.

Holiday Van Erem:

Wonderful, I'm so excited. 20,000 sound tests. That's pretty incredible. I'm so excited about this. Okay, so my first question is, what are IIC and STC ratings? What does that mean?

Unknown:

Yeah, absolutely. That's. So one quick thing. Before we jump into that as well, we run our laboratory here, because you were pointing out how how popular this topic is, and how in demand this testing is, we run our laboratory here seven days a week from 6 am to 5 pm. So we're actually running 77 hours of testing a week. So that's just and we're scheduled out a month or two. So that just shows you you know how popular this testing is. And the testing that we do 90% of the time is STC and IIC, that's the most commonly requested tests. And so STC is airborne sound. So that's like if your upstairs neighbor is blasting TV or radio or screaming at each other. That's what STC would be in relationship to. And honestly, STC is probably the least, the least impactful or the one you get the least complaints about because most buildings are built pretty good on the STC side. So almost every kind of baseline building has a pretty decent STC performance. And that's usually not where your noise complaints are coming from. The noise complaints are really coming from the IIC which stands for impact isolation class, and that would be your upstairs neighbors dragging furniture around walking, jumping up and down. And that is what is complained about a lot and that's what we that's what flooring and underlayment can have a really big impact on and so STC is a is ASTM E 90 is the test method that gives us an STC result and that's that airborne sound. And ASTM E 492 gets us that IIC and that's the impact. And the again, that's the one that you guys probably get the most emails about.

Michael Goria:

Yeah, for sure. No, is it the same test for both? Is it the same style test for both?

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, we almost always run them in conjunction with at the same time so we install flooring in a system. And we can run the the funny thing too is that the tests themselves take about 15 minutes, where a lot of times I'll spend weeks and weeks preparing for a test. And then the test is done in 15 minutes. And I, you know, throw it out and move on. So it can be a little bit depressing when you're doing all this work. Let's say, for example, you're tested like really beautiful terrazzo flooring that you sent, and then a cured up and you're putting it over top of gypsum concrete that cured for 14 days, you might do all this work. And then 15 minutes later, you're done. But yeah, most every system could have an STC and IIC results, there are some of my clients who will save some money and only do one or the other. But whenever that happens, you typically have the architect or designer who says I need both, and you only have the one. So my company always runs both so that we can be the hero in that situation and say, Oh, we actually have that data for you. But yes, every time you have a flooring and underlayment installed, you could run both an STC and an IIC test. And yeah, there they go in, in conjunction with each other.

Holiday Van Erem:

Okay, so what, what does that 15 minutes include? What is the test that's being done?

Daniel Molar:

Yes, it's fun. We also if you ever have people that want to see testing, our door is always open. So you can come to Intertek and actually watch it, test witness it, we love to have visitors. We do a lot of visitors with college tours everything but um, so the first thing I want to say before we get to what the test is, this is literally the only thing if your listeners only remember one thing that I said, I would love them to remember that when we get an STC or IIC result, it is not for the product alone. There's no such thing as an STC or IIC for a flooring or an underlayment if anyone says that they're immediately kind of not really describing it correctly, STC and IIC as a result of the entire system from the top to the bottom. So if there's a flooring and underlayment, that result will be different whether it's on an eight-inch slab, six-inch slab, on an 18-inch open web truss, on a two by 10. So the acoustical results are of a system not of a product. And that's probably the most common misconception. Everybody believes their underlayment is an IC 72. And that is incorrect. It's the system. So that's the first thing I want to just kind of point out. But for the test itself. For our STC test with the airborne sound, I do I do two background measurements where I have nothing turned on those speakers or anything. And I just measure the level in the acoustical chamber. And the funny thing is our acoustical chamber just looks like a big square box. But it actually is about one and a half billion dollar building that's very well isolated. And we use all the highest technology to measure all the frequencies like extremely accurately. So whenever I see some people doing field tests with their iPhone and a microphone, of course, that's decent, but I have a much higher, much higher level, of quality equipment to do our testing. And then for STC, it's relatively straightforward. I blast a ton of sound in the upstairs chamber in our what we would call like our second story, I blast around 120 decibels of sound, which would be equivocal to two jet engines running simultaneously. And what I measure is I measure how loud it is upstairs, and how loud while those jet engines are running, how loud it is in the lower chamber. And the more sound the system stops, the better the rating is. So the more airborne sound you stop, the better you do. And then I do another really quick measurement that is an absorption measurement of my receive room. And that is a kind of like a lab-to-lab correction factor. So if one lab was more absorptive than the other, it would correct for that. So they the STC test takes about five minutes of the 10. It's really straightforward, blast a lot of sound and figure out how much sound the system is stopping. And then for IIC, it's relatively simple, I do the same two background measurements. But I use a thing called a tapping machine, which is a calibrated device that drops these impact hammers, there's five of them, and they drop it from 40 millimeters high. And they just basically keep impacting the flooring and underlayment combination or the system, whatever I'm testing, and I do that tapping machine in four different locations. So I move it around so that I get a good average representation of the entire flooring system. So I basically run the machine, move it run it again, I do that for positions, and those positions are defined in the ASTM standard. So they I just basically follow that standard. And then I do that same absorption measurement. And for IIC I'm only concerned with the sound of the lower chamber. So if it's quieter when I'm running this tapping machine, then it is gonna get us a better IIC result. So the more sound you start with from this tapping machine, I get a lot of people that asked me like, Oh, is that like somebody walking around? Or is it what real world have sound is that like, and there's really not a good comparison because it's like five hammers hitting the floor, because that's what's happening. So there's really no kind of correlation, to what a human would be doing. But it's, um, the machines are very calibrated, they cost around six or $7,000. And we have a couple of them. And, that's what we use for IIC.

Holiday Van Erem:

That is so interesting. I mean, in my mind, as he's describing these tests, I'm thinking, why, why are we so obsessed with this? And why are we so obsessed with how much sound is going to be transmitted in these environments? And we're testing for such large noises compared to what we're really doing inside of a home. And just the point, I think, is fantastic that this is a system rating, this isn't the flooring itself on its own, and we're so obsessed with this floor gives you this sound rating, but we don't ever explain with that rating, you have to go into the fine print to find out what the system was, what they tested it with. And I just it's so crazy to me. What, why, and when did we get so obsessed with this.

Michael Goria:

I want to ask a question then. So from a sales standpoint, how should we be selling? Let's say we have a product that has an IIC of 54.

Daniel Molar:

Yep.

Michael Goria:

That's just the it's not just the flooring. I mean, it's the whole system. So how do we sell that in a market? That's so confused with IIC and STC ratings.

Daniel Molar:

Sure

Michael Goria:

We need to educate people more, I get that. But there's got to be a better way for us to be selling this, for us to be talking about it.

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, from my perspective, if a job is large enough that you would sell, you know, maybe more than 10,000 square feet of flooring, what you really should do in that situation is ask the person who's installing it, what built, what building is it going and what's the makeup of your building, and then your company could provide them acoustical results that are absolutely correlating to their building. And what most companies do is they might even actually have some testing from me, that kind of covers their bases, right? You know, you might have tested on five systems, that would be pretty close to what you know, every building would be. So for example, in commercial construction, most concrete slabs are either six, seven, or eight inch thick. If you could only do one test with me, if you tested on the six-inch concrete slab, that test report would be really applicable to anyone doing something a little bit thicker, right? So I would say the six-inch side was kind of like your worst-case test. So a IIC 54, so when you said you had an IIC 54, I wanted to say, Hey, make sure you say IIC 54 on a six-inch slab.

Michael Goria:

Okay

Daniel Molar:

That's exactly, that's exactly how we should talk about IIC, it should not it should be, it needs to have that information, or else you're not. Or else you're kind of, I'm always like what, like on what or like, I've always like finish that sentence, right, you don't give that detail. And so here's kind of the reality of what you can do, you can as a company, you can really get good accurate data that would represent that building. And in my mind, you could be known as the person who's really gonna give them the right flooring for their project, or you could kind of test, you know, an almost ridiculous assembly and get a really high number and give them that test report. But in my mind, that's kind of not the best way to do business, because that building might get noise complaints that if you don't know, you know, and then you're gonna lose your reputation of providing them a good solution. And so the companies in my mind that do the testing kind of to match the building or do it the right way, and represent it fully instead of on their website saying I got an IIC 70. If they say I have an IIC on this assembly, in my mind, those are the companies that long term benefit the most from their sound ratings, because they're providing the real information.

Michael Goria:

So perfect. You just gave me the answer. So if I have a customer come to me and say I need a IIC of 62. Now my answer will be on what? Right? You didn't finish your sentence. And I think that's a great way to then get a conversation going about, what are you trying to achieve. What's this for? Because that's, that's our biggest stumbling block is people just come to us with these numbers and have no clue why they need what they need.

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, and the reality is, you might have situations where that person then they don't want to have the conversation, they want to just check a box and you and that's the reality of the but that's why, you know, over 10 years, I probably have five conversations a week that are like, the person reaches out to me and say, I need an IIC of 70 and I say well, why where what you know, on what, like, I have a lot of conversations and then explaining to them that that's not really what they do need, you know, and but I do have people that at the end of the day, say I don't care. Thanks for that information Dan I need an IIC 70.

Michael Goria:

I want to check the box.

Daniel Molar:

Yep. And there are to tell you that God's honest truth, there are ways to do that there are ways to build what I would say is, is like a ridiculous assembly right is something that probably is never going to be built in the real world, right? If you could build the one that is successful here at Intertek in York, you could build what we call a high-performance floor ceiling system, which is an eight-inch concrete slab, and below the eight-inch concrete slab, we have a wire home, suspended ceiling. And then on top of the concrete slab, we put a one-inch thick, like fiberglass underlayment, and then two layers of wood subfloor, that system before we even put a flooring down, gets in the high IIC 60s, you know, 67, 68, 69, you put a flooring down, it gets to 70, like the flooring did absolutely, you know, did 1% of that overall makeup. And so you could do that. But in my opinion, that's not the world's best way to get numbers and most commonly 70s that are out in the marketplace are actually old testing before from like, maybe nonreputable labs. So another thing that you do in my mind when you are dealing with a competitive product that has a 70 is, if possible, get the test report and you'll be able to determine whether that testing was kind of accurate, or whether there's some issues with the testing. And I would say anything over about six years old. So any testing prior to like 2016 I would have some questions about whether that was an accurate test it because some things changed over time. So that would be something I also say is like you want when you're selling something and somebody might buy something else instead of yours, you might be able to say like, could you give me the test report and then, you know, a guy named Dan at Intertek who could help you look at that test report and say, Hey, this is why I think that test report might have an issue or maybe why they're not apples to apples. Again, you don't always have those opportunities, because sometimes you just kind of get the door shut on you. But if you do just know that it is possible for me to I look at test reports a lot from other labs from anywhere and can almost always find some reasoning why something got better than it did. If something's too good to be true, it is probably most likely untrue. And there's probably a reason there's nothing magical about a flooring and underlayment. You know there's certain ones that do better than others. Of course, that's why we test them and determine, but there is no, there's nothing that would cause something to get eight points better when they're like almost the exact same other than something kind of disingenuous or, or incorrect with the test.

Holiday Van Erem:

That's fantastic information. And I feel like I'm going to call Daniel later when we're not recording to find out what companies he makes up these fake assemblies for.

Daniel Molar:

What was also kind of funny to think about is that it's also a sad reality is that once you make a test report, it kind of lives on forever, right? So if you have a 15-year-old test report, and you're using that, of course, of course, if you test it kind of to the current standard, and it's 10 points later, you're not going to be thrilled to say Oh, actually, it's lower. One thing about our company though, company that I worked for at Intertek, me and my boss, Jordan have always never wanted to be known as the laboratory that's gonna get you the highest rating, I have no, I have no desire to be known as that I want to be known as the lab to get you the absolute most accurate and repeatable results. So I want to be able to stand behind that we could test this 5, 10, 15 times and get the same result. And then it's going to match what happens when you put it in a building. Because that's really what's gonna be the long-term success is selling products that are then successful in the building. And then they're going to want to come back and say, Hey, that worked really well. We didn't have noise complaints. For example, a way that me and my boss have created a good solution for other companies is I don't know if you guys have heard of Marriott Hotels, they're a little bit popular. They came to me and my boss Jordan and and said, Hey, we have some noise complaints. We, 10 years ago, they said their number one complaint was water pressure and the beds, and now they 90% of their complaints are noise related. And so they want to be they want to get better with their noise. And they said we're going to require that in on an eight-inch concrete slab you get an IIC 60 and me and my boss Jordan are like well, you're not better like carpet, you better want to go back 15 years and do carpet because the only way you're ever gonna get an IIC 60 on an eight-inch slab is with a carpet and so what we did for Marriott is they invited five flooring manufacturers to test like their best acoustic floors and we got a list of 25 results and then they were able to say they picked a threshold that was lower than they originally thought because their threshold at first was too high. Right? So another one of these examples of what they're what they were originally going to request was they didn't have the information to make the right decision. So we help them get the right information. And so now Marriott has a criteria that on an eight-inch concrete slab, you have to get an IIC 57 to be what they call Marriott approved. And now that's another, that's a good benchmark for anyone else. So anything on anything, if you were doing testing, an eight-inch slab testing, a 57 or greater is really kind of the upper echelon of performance, that would mean it's good enough that Marriott says, Hey, this could go in our hotel. And so typically, to achieve that, you need to have either a topical underlayment or a really good attached pad. And it has to be, I get a lot of 56s. And the clients are usually pretty sad about that because you're so close. But that's an example of kind of how you take the numbers that are just kind of silly and these high numbers and actually create a metric that's more reasonable or applicable to the real world. And in order to get that 8-inch slab result, they went out and looked at all their hotels did a business study, and said that 70% of their hotels are eight-inch concrete slab. So that's why they picked that slab, that thickness. And so yeah, I mean, that's something that we do. And then we have other flooring people that what they do is they test on like six assemblies, right, they come in, and they have, this is what really popular floor, I saw a lot of it, I want to test it on a six-inch slab, an eight slab, an open web truss, which is very common in the multifamily industry, and then a two by 10, which is very common in the residential market. And so they kind of have like, data points that are not just one result, they have data points across like six base assemblies that they then can, can use to sell in different markets. So that's something

Michael Goria:

That's perfect. So I think that'd be good to go over what are the maybe four to five most common systems that you guys that you see out there, and that you guys test for.

Daniel Molar:

I'd say the very most common assembly that we test, I have it installed every week is a six-inch slab, that's super common in almost all commercial construction. And even if seven or eight is common, a lot of my clients really liked testing on the six inch because that's what we again, call it our worst case scenario. If you get a good test report on asix-inchh, then it's really good to apply to a seven or an eight-inch. And then I have an six-inch concrete is what really popular an 18 inch open web truss I test all the time as well, that's super common in multifamily. In all these huge apartment buildings or four story hotels, almost every four-story hotel across the United States is made with an 18 inch open web truss. I'm also in a unique position where I get to see a lot of the new building trends and new building things. So right now we're doing a lot of testing on will be called mass timber assemblies that are these big buildings that are made out of like all wood. So picture like a lot like I do a lot of five ply, CLT testing, cross laminated timber testing. So it's kind of fun. If I get one test, then typically, in the next month, I get about five or six other clients who are like, Oh, have you heard of this new building? And I'm like, Yeah, we have one here. And that was one point that I wanted to point out too, is that my company has we have a laboratory where the floor ceiling assembly is able to be removed from the acoustical chamber. So I have 70 different floor ceiling assembly options here at my lab. So if you say I need to do a six, seven, eight inch, I don't have to start from scratch, I have that sitting in the lab, and I can put it in the chamber. So that saves you money time. And then it also makes it really repeatable. If you come back and test on the six inch slab a year later, you're most likely testing on the exact same six inch slab. So when we talk it scientifically about removing variables, there's no better way to remove variables than having it be literally the exact same slab or open web truss. So we have done studies where three years later, we do the same duplicate tests as just a check. And they're like identical. So we're very, we do that very well here at Intertek.

Michael Goria:

So which of those platforms I'll call them is is just best on its own. Which one is most acoustically sound? I guess I'll call it.

Unknown:

Yeah. So and that's another kind of interesting thing is that in acoustics, a lot of times like I answered questions that people think I'm just trying to be like shady or not answer things, right. But the always kind of have to balance that there's the two ratings that we talked about that STC and IIC concrete slabs are really good on STC, they're things that things that stop airborne sound are weight, the more than asked the better. So concrete is like kicking butt on STC. But because it's dense and heavy, it hurts on IIC. So when we're talking acoustically always I'm always like, well, you know, which one are we looking at? So STC on concrete slab buildings is always really good. And then IIC is worse. And then again, we also have to look at when we're talking about sound. The STC and IIC value they take a lot of frequencies from like low frequency, which is like really percussive thuds to high frequency which is like whistling and it and they make one rating from all of those frequencies. And so they make it so it's simple, but then it's it's taking something very complex, complicated. Making it a single number rating. So there are times where something's actually better on some frequencies and worse on other frequencies, but the rating is, is better. So better is a hard term, you know, it's like, but what we do see a lot of people do to kind of answer your main point is we see a lot of people will test like on a six inch slab with a ceiling below, because if you add the ceiling below, you're gonna get a higher baseline starting point. And so that's a good marketing number. You know, I have some people that come in here and say, let's do the real, let's do the real test, that's going to be the building. And then I need a marketing number, I need something to put on my packaging or talk about have a good number I need to, I need to address these people who say I need a 60 or something. And so we have many people that come in and test six inch slab and six inch slab with ceiling to cover those two topics, real numbers, marketing numbers. And there are times where they do a ceiling in a in a building, a lot of times they'll do a ceiling below in bathrooms and like because you need to have that ceiling to run your fans and your ductwork and bathrooms typically would have the hardest surface floor like tile, which is the worst acoustically. So there are actual real world scenarios where a ceiling would be built below a six inch slab. So it's not really like the true fairytale assembly. But that's what I get a lot of people do they do six inch slab and six inch slab with ceiling at the same time to cover both those those results.

Holiday Van Erem:

So we've talked a lot about IIC and STC, but I know that I've heard um Delta or Delta IIC, what is that? And is that worth continuing to discuss?

Daniel Molar:

Absolutely. Delta IIC is like my favorite acoustical rating, because it just addresses a lot of the things that we just talked about. And my boss Jordan, he's actually the chairman of the ASTM E 2179 committee, which deals with Delta IIC. So remember how we talked about how the first question is on what, right, Delta IIC immediately answers that question without any need to say, because a Delta IIC test is done on a, on a six inch concrete slab with no ceiling. So that's how you have to do it on that. The reality is I said six inch slab, but the standard right now says 150 millimeters, which is almost six inches, plus or minus 50 millimeters. And my boss Jordan is trying to that 50 millimeters is kind of a big range. So in this most

Michael Goria:

Two inches, right?

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, exactly right. So you could really test it on a four or an eight. And that's just not that that goes away from what we are trying to do, which is make it really simple. And so in the last ASTM meetings that just happened like two weeks ago, my boss is trying to get it to be 150 millimeters plus or minus 10 millimeters. So it's really like definitively six inch slab. So but at this moment time, it could be like 150 plus or minus 50. But the route of the test is that test at that same laboratory on that same day. So any lab you go to whether it be me or someone else, which you don't ever do, you come to me and we test the 6, we test our six inch slab, then we add a flooring or flooring and underlayment combination, either one, and we test an IIC test on that. And what we are determining is the improvement on that concrete slab. So let's just say let's just pick some kind of ballpark numbers. If I started IIC 30 on my bare concrete slab, and then I add your flooring and I get an IIC 50 your Delta would be around 20. The math is not as simple as that, because there's some kind of high level, you know, 10,000 different calculations, but ballpark, it's that number is that improvement of the IIC result from bare concrete slab to so let's say another lab gets their concrete slab is built a little differently, or it's kind of fancy, or they did something you know, disingenuous, whatever it might be, their base slab starts at 33. So they're three points better than me, which I would say is wrong. You know, I'd say it's inaccurate. But then when they do their IIC tests, they get a 53. That's still a 20 point improvement and right so, so Delta IIC, to me, is the singular most comparable resort, and it takes away the ability to do any system you want, right? It's immediately answers what slab It's on. It's on a six inch slab with no ceiling, and it takes away the labs, differences because that lab has to test their own slab that same day. And then so in fact, almost all of Europe, they focus on what they call Delta L and W which is the same, the same thing as Delta IIC. And so I don't know why in America, we got hung up on these IIC results and let the you know the wild wild west of whatever you want to test. If we only did Delta IIIC you guys save a ton of money because you won't have the tests on 70 of these assemblies. Right, you know, but that would be another way that that I I literally debunk almost all those I see those crazy IIC numbers. If you get the Delta IIC number from somebody who's claiming an IIC 70. It's almost always accurate because it has to be right. And so sometimes there's times where they're advertising an IIC 72, but they're Delta IIC is 25 and your product that you tested genuinely is an IIC 25, Delta IIC 25, as well, but you're advertising an IIC 65, because you did it on a 6 inch slab with ceiling. So that Delta, if I own a building, which unfortunately, I don't own a multi, a 40 story building, which someday maybe, I would only ask for Delta IIC. If somebody came to me with IIC numbers, unless it was exactly the same construction of my building, I would throw it in the garbage and say, give me your Delta IIC. And I would buy the flooring and underlayment combination with the best Delta IIC numbers, because it takes away that game playing. And it standardizes the performance. So Delta IIC is extremely important. The reason that people maybe don't do it all the time is because the numbers are lower, right? You know, they're not 70. And they're like, Oh, well, Delta 20 that doesn't sound that, Delta IIC 20, I want a 70. Right. Like I want to buy the 70. But it's it's it's you just have to educate people that Delta IIC is that the singular best comparative rating between flooring and underlayments. And it's very important. If you do a six inch slab test, you only pay$300 extra to get the Delta IIC added. So it like literally hurts my heart when people come here and they get just the six inch slab IIC result. I'm like get the Delta is right there like come on like I'm begging ya, that's a good result to have.

Holiday Van Erem:

What do you think we can do as an industry to help make that adjustment? Is there certain uh, I mean, it just seems like.

Michael Goria:

We've complicated it.

Holiday Van Erem:

Yeah, we've made it, well, I mean, he's just he said that I can save a whole bunch of money. If I didn't do all these different assembly tests and stuff. So I'm just, I mean, it goes back to our complaint over AC ratings to. How do we as an industry, stop being crazy cowboys? And just to to do our own thing and get on the same page about using, you know, an accurate testing system so that we can compare ourselves to each other.

Michael Goria:

Right? Delta seems like the way to go. Do you see that growing? Do you see more, more and more people requesting Delta ratings?

Daniel Molar:

Ah, I think a lot of people do request it because I am you know, we're advocates for it. We believe in it. We talk about it a lot. But I do unfortunately see, and and I kind of just took a little exception Holiday, that is not the first thing that we're doing what assemblies is not inaccurate, right? It's accurate to that assembly. But I mean, it might be kind of like a little bit extra. And here's here's some other concerns about Delta IIC. And that, that really does a beautiful job on concrete slabs or commercial construction. So they standardize the six inch slab. Now however, those Delta IIC results don't always correlate beautifully when we go to a wood frame construction, or this new construction of CLT. You know, the sometimes the things that do the best on concrete slabs, they don't always do the best, the rank ordering is not the same when you move to a different type of entire type of system. So that's what I think, what I think is that we should have Delta IIC systems on wood frame where we come together as a community and acoustical community where the manufacturers are there, the test labs are there, the building owners are there. And we say, well, what would be the standard wood frame construction? So we could have a couple more of these Delta Delta base assemblies? And we try and do that here at Intertek, I really trying have a standard wood construction I utilize, so that almost all the people testing or testing on a on a very comparable system. But that's unfortunately not in a standard yet. You know, there's no wood frame, Delta IIC construction. But I do think it's I do think you should either be testing the building that's being built or testing Delta IIC. So you should either be matching a construction that is a real building, or you shouldn't be doing these fairytale assemblies, I would, if somebody needs that I like make sure that they signed five pieces of paper that say I know what I'm doing. And I know what I'm requesting, because I really don't, I don't want to spend a lot of our time and energy doing something that's not applicable to the real world.

Holiday Van Erem:

So I think my next question is what and obviously, this is just your opinion, what do you think is the best assembly that we can recommend for a condo project, apartment type project to get the best sound rating? Should they always have a certain type of underlayment? Do you know what are the pieces that we should always be recommending that they add to get the best result?

Daniel Molar:

Sure what I what I think is the best what I see my clients do really well is having a good database of what you've already tested and trying to match up perfectly quickly right because you want to be quick about your results. You don't want to have somebody say you have this sound rating and then you're like, let me look through a file folder seven states away and let you know. So one thing I have done for for you guys is like create what I call an acoustical master summary, which is like every assembly you guys have ever tested. And you as a company, you guys do have like 25 different acoustical tests that you've done with me here. So in my opinion, the most successful clients, they're able to get a request, you can email and say, do you have this result? And you your first response to that client, unless they tell you already, like, Oh, my buildings at eight inch slab. Ask them, what's your building? Do you have a drawing of your building or details about the building you're in, and then go to this master summary and you look at what you've already tested. And odds are, you have something that is almost identical, because one thing that your company has done is you've done good, a good job of having a decent spread of results. So you've had some testing on a six inch slab, a six inch slab with ceiling, a seven inch slab, an eight inch slab, a two by 10, an 18 inch open web truss, a concrete on steel deck assembly, and some testing on a five ply CLT. And suggesting 11 and seven eighths TDI. So you guys really, truly I say this, with the utmost sincerity, you guys have tested on a lot of assemblies. So you have that you have data points across more than almost all your competitors. Most people kind of get in this hole of testing on all 8 inch slab or they have, you know, they have they've done 100 tests with me, they've had 95 of them on 8 inch slab, and you guys really have a good spread. But what you want to make sure you have is that somebody in your company has access to that file with all the results and can get that results like really quickly. Some of the competitors that I've seen do really good, they have these programs where they can, you know, acoustic selectors where you can pick the base assembly and pick the floor and the the end user can get that test report like, immediately. Or I've done testing for clients where I've done, you know, 1000 tests, and they create like a sound and fire manual that is, you know, hundreds of pages long. Now, the funny thing about this particular manual is that this manual probably has about a million dollars worth of testing in it. So you, you can do that, you know, that's that's an option. But that's like five years of work. And it comes out to be just a book where you can just scroll through and say, okay, this is my system, and what am I gonna get. But the genuine thing that I like to tell people is that having somebody that can quickly access the data and understand what the base assemblies are, is, is a huge market improvement, you know, something that would set you apart from your competitors is to be able to give them a report, that's not only a good result, but accurate to their building quickly, would be very successful. And then what you can do also is, you can make a list of you know, of what you've been requested that you haven't been able to answer, right. So if you've had eight emails asking for, you know, an assembly, and you've had to give them something close to it, or say like, we can test it, another thing that you can do is you can also push some of the cost of testing off to the person requesting right you know, you can, you can do projects where the building owner pays 50%, or 75%. Or we do that a lot where I work together with multiple companies to split the invoice or to work together. So it doesn't always mean that the flooring guy has to pay all the bills. So that's another thing to keep in mind.

Michael Goria:

I've got a very basic question. I don't know if you can answer it. By nature. Are there products that are more sound resistant than others? You made a comment earlier that stone or tile obviously has the you know, the highest sound? Would laminate, you know, luxury vinyl? Where do they all fall just naturally?

Daniel Molar:

Yeah, I'd say like kind of like in a generalized terminology, all things else being equal. Your worst flooring is usually like a sheet vinyl or two, two millimeter glue down, you know, that would perform that would give you very little acoustical benefit, right? And then beyond that, then you would maybe go to maybe like a click lock that doesn't have a pad maybe like a five millimeter LVP with no pad, that would be in the same range as like maybe a laminate or engineered wood with no acoustical padding. And then you start to see the real, the real good floorings being anything with an attached pad, and then also flooring wise, I'm always like a very tactile person, I like love to touch the flooring that I'm testing. And usually the softer they are, the more resilience they have, the better they're going to perform. Because the hammers are impacting that. And so if they have the ability to, to absorb some sound, some of that impact that'll all sound is is energy. So if they're softer, they're going to do a little bit better. But the interesting thing is that I'm smart enough to realize that acoustics is not the only concern that you guys also have to deal with. Durability, waterproofing, things like that. So sometimes things that help you for sound by hurt you for durability. And so if you put a really thick underlayment or and another thing I like to tell teach people about sound, is that using dissimilar materials, so if you did two, if you did foam, if you had like an IXP foam, doing three millimeters of that is not going to be as good as doing like one and a half millimeters of that, and then a cork or a rubber. So all of those different materials, all, every physical material has some frequencies that they help stop. And so when you use dissimilar materials, they work better together. And then and then another thing that people have happened is that there is a law of diminishing returns and acoustics where as you start to, if you have an underlayment that's a big deal, it helps a lot. But if you have more underlayment or two underlayments, start to not have as big of a deal, it's not as important. And so I get a lot of times people will test a two millimeter and a four millimeter and a six millimeter, and they don't see it keep going up. And they're kind of they're like, oh, you ran the test wrong. And it's like, no, yeah, you just don't see you don't see the improvement as you get to thicker. So there's a lot to learn. You know, it's what I do testing, every time I run a test, it makes me want to do two more tests, because there's so much to learn from it. And there's so many variables that come into play, whether a flooring is glued down or floated that would affect the sound, and whether it's installed different directions and things like that. There's so many things that come into play. And then ceramic tile is the worst. Yeah, that's exactly ceramic tile does not do good for sound. Now there's people that work really hard, they focus their energy on trying to create an underlayment underneath tile that can can help with sound. But the challenging thing with that is that you really can't mess with the durability of it right. You can't have cracking of tile and cracking of that, so that's a tough nut to crack. But that's the other interesting thing from my perspective at the lab is that I get to test for so many kinds of interesting people and clients because I could test for flooring underlayment, the flooring and underlayment. I test for the OSB subfloor guys that test for the people that make joists, I test for drywall guys, I can test for the building owner. It's just unbelievable list of people that I can test for and, and we do a lot of really kind of fun projects that I swear every single day for 10 years. I've learned multiple new things every day. So it's been it's been fun.

Holiday Van Erem:

That's wonderful. Well, I know that at this point in my mind is, there are so many things that I'm like rethinking why have we been doing this this way I knew we need to change our process and do things differently. My brain is going.

Michael Goria:

Also clarified so many misnomers, you know, things that we've been told or heard that just aren't. So it's good to just get the basis of it.

Holiday Van Erem:

Uh huh. Thank you so much, Daniel. I think, I think this is good for today. I think this is a good 101 and I feel like we definitely need him back again later to dive in even even deeper.

Michael Goria:

There is even more, I can tell.

Daniel Molar:

Absolutely. I love to tell everybody that that's our job here at Intertek. I'm not just the testing guy, I'm trying to educate and trying to keep the community running. There's you know, there's there's many more topics to discuss, too. There's some new things in the last few years that we could talk about. There's some new kind of frequent new ratings that are that, but I again, kind of think you're right that that for is better for like a 201 class or more, more discussion, because you do want to make sure that in my opinion, you want to have the foundation of STC and IIC before you start talking about other ratings. Because if you're not really solid about it. And then yeah, I would always like people to know that my, my phone line is always open people can email call me, my favorite thing is to answer questions about acoustics. Because the more you understand about it, the more you're going to be able to successfully talk about it, which is going to lead to more testing and more and more projects together. And I even talk to condo boards a lot. You know, I even tell them like when the condo board calls me and wants a 70 I'm always, I'm always willing to educate people. And sometimes that helps you guys because sometimes coming from you like it doesn't have the same weight as coming from the lab where they can say like, yeah, so I'm always willing to do that because I I understand the position that you're in where you were. So when you have people that are checking a box that want a 70. Don't hesitate to let them contact me directly and I can I can speak on your behalf where like a 70 is kind of ridiculous request when they don't even know what they're building is, you know,

Michael Goria:

We've got a new resource.

Holiday Van Erem:

I know. I feel so good now.

Michael Goria:

Hey, we really appreciate you taking the time to go through all this with us your passion for sound abatement and just the industry is awesome. Yeah, we're really looking forward to getting this one out to the folks in our community.

Daniel Molar:

Awesome. Hey, thanks again so much for having me. I hope everybody enjoys their weekend. It's only a couple hours for us here, here in York, PA to get to the weekend.

Holiday Van Erem:

Wonderful, thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you again soon.

Daniel Molar:

Take care, bye bye.

Holiday Van Erem:

Bye. What the Floor is a T&A Supply Company Inc original production. You can find out more about us at tasupply.com or TASflooring.com.

Michael Goria:

This show is produced by Jose Morales with help from Toni Collier and Jessica Riser, hosted by Holiday Van Erem and Michael Goria.

Holiday Van Erem:

Tell us what you think of the show by emailing us at WTFpodcast@tasupply.com or on the social medias, hashtag what the floor podcast.

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What is IIC?
If this is the only thing you remember
How to talk about IIC ratings
Why are assemblies important?
The Marriott Standard
What is Delta IIC?