Noise from the European Parliament building

Bulgaria’s European Parliament building is located in one of the busiest locations in central Sofia. In order for the air to circulate, an air-conditioning chamber is installed on the roof, which operates throughout the whole day. Apart from that, from the courtyard of the building, on the sixth floor there is a diesel generator, which again operates throughout the whole day. The European Parliament shares that courtyard with several residential buildings. In recent years, there have been numerous complaints from people living in these buildings about the high noise coming from the diesel engine and the climate chamber on the roof.

Because of that, the European Parliament contacted DECIBEL for an effective solution. Our team has created a project to isolate the noise from the air-conditioning chamber and the diesel engine.
DECIBEL’s approach took several stages. First, silencers were used to silence the openings, and for some of them, additional structures had to be attached in order to withstand weather conditions. A fence of PZP panels was installed around the air-conditioning chamber, with perforated sheet metal on the front and solid sheet metal on the rear in order to eliminate excess noise.

Some difficulties arose during the process due to the busy location of the area. The structural elements were individually designed to be no larger than 2.40 meters in size so that they could be lifted to the roof with the building elevator. After the installation of the air conditioning structure, the same process followed with the diesel generator, where besides the walls a roof to be installed was necessary as well. The duration of the entire installation took 30 days.

Positive feedback from the complainants living in the buildings followed immediately after the installation.