GILROY
– City Council’s positive reaction to a proposal that would
reduce the number of new sound walls in Gilroy means builders will
soon have to find ways to keep residential noise at its current
levels.
GILROY – City Council’s positive reaction to a proposal that would reduce the number of new sound walls in Gilroy means builders will soon have to find ways to keep residential noise at its current levels.
As early as December, City Council could approve general plan changes calling for less reliance on masonry walls to keep loud sounds from invading one’s home. Despite the calls for fewer sound walls, the city plans to keep allowable sound levels – 45 decibels for interiors and 60 decibels for exteriors – on the books now.
“Without sound walls it will be incumbent upon builders to keep noise levels low,” said Tim Filice, a co-owner of Glen Loma Group, a prolific housing development firm in Gilroy.
Filice’s company is building a major housing project off Santa Teresa Boulevard, a thoroughfare that figures to impact residents with a significant amount of traffic noise. Under current law, Glen Loma Group could build a bulky sound wall along the road, but when the company held community meetings about the housing project, the idea of a sound wall was unpopular.
“The sound wall issue bubbled right up to the top of the list of things they didn’t like,” Filice said. “They were very sensitized to it.”
And so was City Council, which put together a task force charged with finding alternate ways to muffle noise.
There aren’t many structural alternatives to brick or cement walls when trying to reduce decibels. Rows of trees and shrubs or landscaped earth berms are about it, said Bill Faus, Gilroy’s planning division manager.
However, Faus said the way a home is built, the direction it faces and its distance from the road can significantly change how much noise gets through a house’s walls or invades its patio or backyard space.
The existing guidelines in some cases mandate sound walls to be erected to solve noise problems for a 360-degree perimeter of a home. Under the new set of rules, noise limits will not have to be met around the entire exterior. Instead, areas like patios and backyards must be impacted by no more than 60 decibels of sound. Sound limits will not be triggered around, for instance, a garage.
A noise at 60 decibels is as loud as a “normal talking voice.” Sound at 110 decibels is equivalent to shouting in one’s ear. A 120-decibel level is as loud as thunder.
If certain conditions can be met, noise levels up to 70 decibels will be allowed.
Filice said dropping sound walls from housing projects will not necessarily make it cheaper, or more profitable, to develop homes.
“This is not about cost savings,” Filice said.
