Dryer Duct Noise

Miscellaneous Inspection Topics AskNACHI.org Questions
1

Dear Friends at InterNACHI,

I seek your acoustic wizardry.

An apartment building was just built next door to my condo and its dryer ducts on the external walls emit a high pitched whistling drone lasting upwards of an hour throughout the day and night. Each unit (there are 24) has its own washing machine and dryer and anytime someone uses their dryer, we hear this noise—it is louder or softer depending on where in the 24 unit complex the dryer is. Needless to say, it is profoundly disturbing both physically and mentally.

Do you have any suggestions for how they can reduce the noise? Building & Safety came out (we live in Los Angeles, CA) and the noise isn’t at least 5 decibels above the ambient noise so they don’t consider this a code violation. Therefore, we are relying on the good neighborship of the owner.

We would be ever so grateful for any wisdom you may have that we could share with the owner to help him fix the noise problem.

With kindest regards,

Suzanne

2

If you’re lucky, the noise is caused by the outlet shape, but there’s more chance that the ducts are undersized.

3

The whistle is likely due to a corrugated plastic pipe, try using smooth metal pipe. Try to Google “sound resonance through corrugated pipe”