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Approved 1/11/2016
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<br />OC Board of Adjustment – 11/9/15 Page 27 of 48
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<br />Bob Flynn: It can be done; you won’t like the cost. 1
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<br />Noral Stewart: Yeah, that’s what I was saying. 3
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<br />Bob Flynn: My experience in development and managing buildings is if you approve this, once the building is built and you’ve 5
<br />mitigated that problem… The neighbors, all of us, will be subject to the sounds of day to day operation. So my question to you is, 6
<br />what is the decibel level of a garbage truck entering the property and dumping a ten-yard dumpster and what is the sound of the 7
<br />delivery truck entering the property and what is that continuous sound of a hundred cars coming and going? 8
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<br />Noral Stewart: I don’t know if I can off the top of my head answer your questions, exactly. I can tell you about certain things such 10
<br />as a heavy truck, like a tractor trailer truck moving on the highway at say 55 mph, at 50 feet away. The sound level is going to be 11
<br />somewhere around 85 dB A at 50 feet. And, that’s going to drop off with distance, at 100 feet it’s maybe going to be 6 dB less, at 12
<br />200 feet it’s going to maybe be another 6 dB less. But, large trucks are much noisier than cars, just going by general rules of 13
<br />thumb, when we do road noise calculations, a box truck, a general delivery truck, the kind of truck UPS drives or the trucks that 14
<br />just have two axels. Those are about 10 decibels louder than a car. So they’re perceived to be twice as loud as a car. A heavier 15
<br />truck, like a tractor trailer is, if I remember correctly, about 10 decibels louder than that. It’s very much louder. Garbage trucks tend 16
<br />to be more like the heavy trucks. I’ve done some measurements of things like dumpsters and so forth but I would hesitate to try to 17
<br />recall the numbers off the top of my head. But, of course that can be a loud event. We just don’t know how many of those kinds 18
<br />of events are going on and so forth. I haven’t worried too much about them, but that could be some extra part of what would be a 19
<br />concern to the neighbors. 20
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<br />Karen Barrows: I have one question Dr. Stewart. I heard you say something about temperature inversion and things can be louder 22
<br />when the sun goes down and, if these events are happening, presumably, in the evening is that- 23
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<br />Noral Stewart: That’s right at the worst time, matter fact. Now the evening is. There’s two things really that make it worse. One is 25
<br />the temperature inversion situation and the sound is going to travel more strongly then than it would in the middle of the afternoon. 26
<br />Especially affecting places that are more than 500, 600, 1000 feet away. If you get within 200-300 feet away it’s not a very 27
<br />significant effect. But once you start getting out close to a thousand feet and that’s a very significant effect and for greater 28
<br />distances, a very significant effect. The other things in the evening is sometimes things gets quieter in general in the evening from 29
<br />other sources around that might be some distance off, that you might otherwise hear, but the bigger factor in the evening is the 30
<br />inversion as opposed to the common perception of just other things getting quieter. Another factor though is, that it’s around the 31
<br />time that people are going to bed, the most sensitive hour of the day. I always have to tell all my clients this. The most sensitive 32
<br />hour of the day is that hour when somebody is crawling into bed. Because at that time they’ve turned everything off in their house, 33
<br />it’s gotten very quiet. What they’re going to hear is whatever is outside. And if they go to bed and there is something that is coming 34
<br />in that’s irritating them and they have trouble going to sleep, not necessarily because it’s so loud that it physically would wake 35
<br />them up or keep them from sleeping if they were asleep but, it irritates them because, “Hey, why are they doing this to me?”, they 36
<br />get irritated and then they can’t go to sleep. It just compacts things. So, I have to advise my clients, you got to be very careful 37
<br />about evening hours when people are trying to go to bed. More so than 3 o’clock in the morning because they’re already asleep 38
<br />then, unless they wake up. But, when they’re trying to go to sleep, that’s a period when they can get most irritated. 39
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<br />Karen Barrows: Thank you. Any other questions for Dr. Stewart? 41
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<br />Wallace Williams: I have one other question. 43
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<br />Karen Barrows: Ok Wallace. 45
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<br />Wallace Williams: Ok so, this occurred about a month ago out at Valhalla the town gave them a fireworks permit and, we’re 47
<br />inside our home and our windows are closed, we have a log cabin, and windows are closed but we could hear this loud noise and 48
<br />there was fog that night too. And it sounded like World War III had started so we called 911 and they told us what was going on. 49
<br />My question is, we have a second floor bedroom and that kind of raises you up and sound travels in a straight line so what kind of 50
<br />impact can I expect to get from this facility? Hopefully, they would never have fireworks but... I trust that you will never have 51
<br />fireworks but I can’t trust that you’ll never sell the property. 52
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<br />Noral Stewart: Well, that what you said there was fog, a fog is a condition that can create an inversion even in the middle of the 54
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