Designing a better night's sleep

Auckland University researchers may have the key to shutting out the heat while tuning out the noise when it comes to buildings that need to breathe.

Pratik Navani either boils alive in his sun-baked apartment in summer or risks the wrath of his flatmate with the thump of his cooling fans.

He knows it's an unpopular view, but he can't wait for Auckland's summer to be over.

Briana Juretich-Greig moved to a new-build townhouse from her draughty old home, only to find a dense humidity following her up the stairs.

There's some relief when the hot season passes, but then heavy condensation collects on the windows.

Solutions on offer right now either require spending up large on air conditioning or sacrificing a good night's sleep.

"My partner would love to have all of the bedroom windows open and I cannot, because I can't sleep with the noise of cars coming past and all that sort of thing outside," Juretich-Greig says.

It's a dilemma that Dr Andrew Hall says is set to get worse as cities build more homes to meet growing demand.

"You're going to have more exterior noise, because you've got more of these community spaces, but also within the house itself you've got multiple levels, so you've got noise coming from down through the floor systems as well and through the walls," he says.

Hall is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Auckland.

He says traditional building materials fail to address both noise minimisation and quality airflow, leaving people having to choose one over the other.

On a mission to find a solution, Hall is leading world-first research, developing advanced building materials that allow cool air in, while keeping loud noise out.

"Initially we're going to target that white noise, traffic noise sound that comes in," he says.

When it comes to creating something that's noise cancelling, Hall says you need a range of what are called "meta materials" that can absorb different levels of sound frequency.

One of the designs he's showing The Detail today would sit below the windowsill.

"The simplest version we can think of at the moment is having an extended duct underneath [the window] and these meta materials are integrated into where the studs are inside the wall.

"So normally you have a panel on one side and then a four by two stud and then another panel on the other side... so you can integrate these metamaterials within that wall," he explains.

At the current developmental stage, the product looks like a big cylinder, creatively designed by students to look like cans of Fanta, baked beans or drum kits.

Hall says the system can be made into any shape and size and when it comes to installing the systems into homes, the designs will be much simpler.

"You could either have lots of these different tubes coming out underneath the window, so they're just holes in the wall which you can shut for privacy and thermal insulation, but then you can open them up for ventilation.

"But they could also be a rectangular slot all the way down... the ultimate solution would be to integrate them into windows fully," he says.

But before he tackles windows, Hall wants to start with doors.

"They are definitely a weak point in a building, lots of apartments now are going to have doors connecting to communal spaces.

"Also it's not a structural component so it's easier for us to go, 'okay let's just make this as good as we possibly can with our meta material tools'," he says.

Hall's goal is to have the products on the market within the decade, he's working closely with the construction industry, which is receptive to these ideas.

"We haven't really got anything over the line in terms of a product yet but I guess that's research right, if it was easy then everyone else would be doing it."

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