Autism.westmidlands school remedial works
The Challenge
Autism.westmidlands school for autism is a residential and day facility for pupils aged 8-19, providing specialist teaching strategies that are designed to overcome the barriers to education caused by autism.
One of these potential obstacles to learning is background noise which, if left untreated, can cause stress and anxiety for the autistic children.
The dining hall at the autism.westmidlands school was identified as a problem area as its concrete design intensified reverberated noise caused by metal knives and forks. Whilst an acoustic treatment in the dining hall was obviously required, it would also need to account for the constraints of a school environment.
John Cashmore, estates manager at the autism.west midlands school for autism, explains: “Due to the special requirements of our pupils, any solution would need to be kept out of the children’s reach.”
In light of this, the material specified for the dining hall would need to be installed on the ceiling. Moreover, since the first floor directly above uses under-floor heating, any solution used could not be reactive to heat.
The Solution
In order to reduce reverberated noise in the dining hall of the autism.westmidlands school for autism, CMS Acoustics provided its Melamine acoustic foam with self adhesive backing. This was easily installed on the dining hall ceiling by staff at autism.westmidlands.
CMS Acoustics’ Melamine acoustic foam is a high performing, adaptable material that is suitable for a variety of settings. It is white in colour and available in a range of sheet sizes.
To cover the whole dining hall ceiling area of 44m² at the autism.west midlands school for autism, CMS Acoustics Melamine was supplied in sheets of 2.5m x 1.25m x 30mm thick.
Results
Since the installation of CMS Acoustics’ Melamine acoustic foam, background and vocal noise has been reduced in the dining hall by up to 40 percent and has ultimately helped to reduce anxiety amongst the autistic pupils.
The flexible nature of CMS Acoustics’ Melamine acoustic foam makes it appropriate for high temperature applications, since it has a thermal conductivity value of 0.0032 to 00.034 W/mK. This meant that the Melamine was compatible with the under-floor heating on the first floor of the school.
John Cashmore concludes: “Despite the fact that the Melamine acoustic foam needed to be installed on the ceiling, we were able to carry this out ourselves, which is testament to the product itself and CMS Acoustics’ clear installation guidelines.
“We were extremely impressed with all of CMS Acoustics’ literature and found the products and results on their website particularly useful as the information is in layman’s terms. We hope to work with CMS Acoustics in the future on pending projects.”
Product Case Study
