The New York Times - Real Estate Section Sunday, March 11, 2007

Laminated Windows Keep Out the Din

By Jay Romano

Good windows keep out rain and snow, and better windows keep out cold, wind and heat. But most windows aren't very good at stopping noise.

"In apartment buildings and in buildings made of brick or stone, almost all outside noise comes through the windows," said David Skudin, the president of CitiQuiet in Long Island City, Queens, a company that makes and installs soundproofing windows.

"A standard window is eliminating something like 40 to 50 percent of outside noise," Mr. Skudin said. "But it is possible to eliminate almost all outside noises without changing the exterior appearance of the window?"

The most common way to do that, he said, is to install a soundproof interior window that lines up identically with the existing window," Mr. Skudin said. For example, if the existing window is the double-hung type, with two sashes that move up and down, then the ashes of the soundproof window will line up with them and will move up and down, too.

If the existing window is a slider or a casement window, the interior window will mimic it.

The soundproofing is accomplished, Mr. Skudin said, by using laminated glass for the interior window and creating dead air space between the interior and exterior windows.

The laminated glass can be anywhere from a quarter to seven-eighths of an inch thick and is made by fusing a clear plastic membrane between two sheets of glass. The dead-air space is created by mounting the interior window three or four inches from the existing window.

"Depending on the thickness of the glass and the amount of dead-air space," Mr. Skudin said, "we can eliminate up to 95 percent of outside noise."