29 lift are: • inside the room or machinery space: o winch with gearbox and possible forced ventilation o gearless motor and possible forced ventilation o frames and anchor supports o speed limiter o hydraulic control unit o electric control panel o hydraulic flow in the pipes • in the shaft compartment: o sliding of the car during travel o fixing of brackets and supports to walls o possible air compression phenomena for fast systems o oscillations of ropes and any compensation chains o hydraulic flow inside the pipes • during operation: o movements when opening and closing landing doors o acoustic signals, gongs and voice synthesiser o running passage interference with closed doors Starting, slowing down and stopping phases must also be considered. Typical values of noise emitted at source by good quality equipment The source emission values in table are usually considered typical. Component Typical value [dB] Winch with gearbox without forced ventilation < 60 Winch with gearbox with forced ventilation < 75 Gearless motor without forced ventilation < 52 (< 55 high power) Gearless motor with forced ventilation < 62 (< 65 high power) Hydraulic power unit < 70 (< 75 high power) Door motor < 55 Useful precautions during installation There is a frequent request for anti-vibration buffers to be placed between the winch frame and the load-bearing slab, between the gearless motor and the rail support, and between the rail brackets and the walls of the shaft. It is not always possible to meet this requirement as other characteristics must be guaranteed for correct and safe operation. The perfect horizontality and verticality of the equipment must in any case be guaranteed, particularly at the rope inlets on the pulleys to avoid friction and premature wear of the grooves and ropes with an important reflection on the service life, safety and noise level of the installation. The same applies to the sliding or rolling of the runner blocks on the guides, whose imperfect verticality and adjustment not only leads to wear, but also to increased noise and, at times, untimely tripping of the chute system. The standards also set rather strict limits on the maximum elastic deflection of the guides including the anchorages under the action of the thrusts induced in the various calculation stresses, which makes the presence of elastic anchorage supports practically incompatible. Location of installation rooms for lift components It is quite intuitive to understand that the location of the machinery room is of great importance with respect to the area of the building where noise is perceived. In hydraulic installations, for example, the machinery room is typically arranged at the bottom so that the attenuation of noise upwards is much easier than in electrical installations whose machinery room is typically arranged above the head of the shaft. In the case of Machine RoomLess (MRL) installations, in particular, the motor is frequently arranged inside the headroom directly above the car runners; the shaft, in turn, is often surrounded by the building’s stairwell, but occasionally it is adjacent to rooms of private use. In this type of installation, moreover, the switchboard is often arranged close to the door of the highest floor, although in many cases it is installed on lower floors or on non-adjacent walls. The design for the replacement of an existing installation is particularly delicate when the anchorage of the rails and their arrangement in relation to the surrounding masonry are shifted, especially when switching to the solution with both rails insisting on the same wall. The acoustic signals must combine audibility with sufficiently high tones to fulfil their function with the reasoned request not to disturb rest, especially at night. Reference regulations currently in force There are basically two regulations that affect this issue: • the Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers (Italian: DPCM) 05.12.1997 which regulates the passive acoustic requirements of buildings; • the UNI 11367:2023 standard that classifies passive acoustic requirements and defines the criteria for their assessment. In addition, public procurement requires compliance with the Minimum Environmental Criteria set out in the Decree of 23.06.2022. Finally, the possible existence of other local rules and regulations that might introduce special or additional requirements must be checked. The above standards provide for different assessments between residential, office and hotel environments, and apply to interactions between different building units with regard to external noise, or noise produced by footsteps, transmitted from facades and originating from the operation of systems, including acoustic reverberation phenomena. The regulations do not apply if the rooms belong to the same property as the rooms where the noise is generated. Lifts are included among installations with discontinuous operation, with a permissible peak limit of 35 [dB]. Sound level measurements must be carried out in the room where the noise level is highest, and must be different from the room where the noise originates. The standards stipulate that the noise level must be measured in rooms that are not adjacent to the machine room. A particularly reliable reference is still the VDI 2566 regulations, which provides some model schematisations. This last regulations deals with: • reference values for noise emission in the shaft (airborne and
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