Project outline
Air source heat pumps (ASHPs) offer a significant opportunity to decarbonise home heating. However, the increasing rate of installations at homes across the UK and Europe may lead to a rise in community noise, impacting public health and wellbeing, and potentially hindering the adoption of heat pumps. Current standards for assessing noise from ASHPs follow a simplistic approach that does not generally consider the impact of acoustic character (such as tonality and low frequency noise), operating schedule, background sound or the cumulative effects of multiple installations. It is known that these factors affect human perception of sound in general, but the psychoacoustic impact of such factors in the context of ASHP noise is not understood.
This project investigates the influence of these factors on community noise. It studies how community noise impacts can be minimised through appropriate ASHP placement and planning, using a combination of fieldwork and laboratory-based psychoacoustic experiments. Ongoing stakeholder engagement throughout the project will ensure the outcomes are actionable and relevant. By improving the way in which heat pump noise is assessed, this project will help to minimise the potential noise issues caused by heat pumps, and will contribute to removing barriers to further heat pump uptake.
Project Partners
This project is hosted at the University of Salford and is supported by CIBSE.
Student
Katie Salter