Play and activity room

Pre-schools, children’s recreation centres and day-care centres are environments where children move around the whole premises. Activities range from sitting still and listening to someone reading to noisy games.

• Large open areas encourage conversation at a distance, which results in people tending to raise their voices, trying to be heard over others. Sound breeds sound, creating a disturbing "cocktail of noise".
  
• Hard surface materials create problematic sound amplification and sound propagation. The sound is transported a long way and so disturbs a large number of people.
  
• Hard flooring creates noisy footsteps and scraping noises from chairs and tables.
  

• Reverberation time of 0.4 seconds. To achieve this, a full acoustic ceiling is needed of sound absorption class A (in accordance with EN ISO 11654).
  
• Certain wall surfaces may also need to be fitted with sound absorbers to avoid flutter echoes.

• UK regulations, Building Bulletin 93 (BB93), states that in nursery schools an unoccupied mid frequency (Tmf) reverberation time of <0.6 seconds must be achieved.
  
• Swedish Standard 02 52 68 recommends a reverberation time of 0.4 or 0.5 seconds, depending on the selected quality level. This applies to normally furnished but unoccupied rooms. The above figure is the highest recommended value for the frequency range 250 - 4,000 Hz. At 125 Hz a value 20% higher is permitted.

• Due to the risk of damage, the acoustic ceiling and wall absorbers may need an impact resistant surface layer.

• Ecophon Super G (impact resistant surface layer) for the ceiling.
• Ecophon Wall Panel for additional sound absorption on walls.

• Ecophon Master/alpha for the ceiling.
• Ecophon Wall Panel for additional sound absorption on walls.