Rating System for Evaluating the Acoustical Environment of Existing School Facilities

Abstract

Recent work on architectural acoustics has been directed primarily towards new school facilities. However, a serious problem facing all major school districts is keeping existing facilities usable. In most instances school districts have not developed an effective, systematic approach to school renovation or plant repair. As a step towards solving this problem the Computerized Facilities Inventory (CFI) program was developed and implemented in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). The CFI program, performed on all pre-1933 schools in the district, recorded the physical characteristics of each individual space, such as architectural, lighting, heating, acoustical, etc. This information, together with unit costing data for corrective work, was programmed into the SFUSD's accounting computers. In the development of the acoustical portion of the study it was decided that the time and instrumentation necessary to obtain objective data for each space would be prohibitively expensive and would yield a higher degree of accuracy than could be used. Therefore a subjective rating system was developed which is closely related to the standard objective units of acoustic measure and whose implementation relies on experienced individuals in the field of architectural acoustics.