Although I would love to attend the planing board meetings, I have other obligations on most Monday nights that prevent me from doing so.
if anyone out there is looking for a topic to approach the board the with, here are a couple of items that could have severe impact on the quality of life for surround residents.
One item of great importance to me is the effect of noise pollution on residents living on GPR, Meridan Rd., Old Beach Glenn, and Oak Meadows. In particular, I read they plan on putting the HVAC units on the roof. This is totally unacceptable, as these units tend to be very noisy, and when elevated on a rooftop, that noise could travel over a mile if the wind is right. I'm sure our resident engineer Craig can vouch for me on this.
The second thing is Light Pollution. the current plan calls for many lights on the building and in the parking lot. I'm not sure what the effects of backlighting would be, but think it's something that needs to be investigated.
There is a substantial amount of acoustical energy created by the turbine fans on the evaporators of such units. These things are not like home air conditioners by any stretch. Their noise spectrum is weighted heavily towards the bottom end of the audio spectrum producing what sounds like a rumbling noise. As for low frequency noise propagating, when we first moved to Meriden Rd 15 years ago, there were no sound blocking walls on Rt 80 which is about 2 miles away from here at its closest point as the crow flies. There was also no noise polution at that point in time.
Then they installed the sound walls. Because of the law of the conservation of energy, and since walls do not absorb the energy, just reflect it, we now hear the roar of Rt 80 here on a continious basis. It is a low frequency rumbling sound which is very annoying. Interestingly, we probably hear more noise than someone who lives on the other side of the wall.
200 HP turbine blowers in the heat exchangers definitely will create some low frequency noise that will propagate for long distances, especially if the sources are elevated. Of course, the good rev would never consider putting the heat exchangers at ground level since that would produce noise energy that would bother him and dissipate locally on that property.
