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Approved 6/13/2011 OC Board of Adjustment – 3/14/11 Page 12 of 59 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Nick Herman: What is your opinion about the proposed construction of this facility in comparison to other kennels you are familiar with from an acoustical standpoint? Noral Stewart: Considering some I have seen, this one is much better, especially because we don’t have leaks to the outside or windows. It is well designed for sound blockage, I might advise Mr. West to do some things on the inside to help himself but that doesn’t affect things coming out since these other factors will make up for that. The outside design with the runs outside are done much better than most I see to separate the dogs from one another to limit the sounds. Nick Herman: How does it compare, this board some time ago approved Gene Lonsway’s kennel, to the design of Lonsway’s kennel? Noral Stewart: Lonsway had some differences. He had a ventilation system which we had to worry about the sound getting to the outside which is different. He had windows in his building so we had to worry about those. His ceiling design was one that would not necessarily block as much sound as what we have here but it helped to reduce the sound inside which helped make up for that. There were some differences in the design. He did not have a bigger buffer to neighbors so we had to be careful there. Nick Herman: All things considered, is this as good as or better than what was approved in Lonsway’s? Noral Stewart: I would say it is as good or better. We do have a difference that we have more outside spaces; he did not have outside spaces other than to take the dogs out. Nick Herman: Anything further? Noral Stewart: If they got a letter we wrote in January, I want to note there was a slight change in location with kennels because some of my distances are a little off from the final plans. James Carter: What does the acronym db stand for? Noral Stewart: db is a unit used to measure sound. It is named after Alexander Graham Bell. One tenth of a bell. We typically, in measuring sound in the community for various other uses when we are talking about how people perceive the sound, we modify the sound a little bit before we measure it to account for the way the ear hears. The ear does not hear the low frequency base sound as well as middle range sounds which is where most of our speech is. We use an electronic filter in the instrument to modify the sound before you measure it in decibels. Though there are people who say it is not correct to say so, the common way for denoting is to put an a after the db. A gentleman who died several years ago would correct anybody saying you should say the weighted sound level in decibels, there is no such thing as a dba, but everybody does that as a shortcut. Tom Brown: Any further questions? Larry Wright: You stated that the building position design steers sound in one direction or another. Could you please expound on that? Noral Stewart: Specifically the outdoor runs, the way they are oriented on the side of the building. They will steer a little more to the north and the south. Larry Wright: And are there neighbors to the north and south? Noral Stewart: There are some closer ones to the east. But that is not a major factor but a minor situation and my conclusions were based on going in that direction at the time I analyzed it. Nick Herman: We have talked about a house up here, right?