Noisy bathroom? choose Quiet Mark products
Noise pollution isn't just generated by traffic, roadworks and screaming children in playgrounds. Lots of us put up with excessive noise in our homes - noise from electrical equipment and bathroom products in particular. Quiet Mark wants to help and it's identified quieter products that can improve your quality of life
By Abby Trow
The Quiet Mark label is awarded to products that have been engineered to be quieter. Bathrooms are associated with a lot of noise, what with pumps, flushing loos and extractor fans... but the next time you need to update your bathroom, you'll find a useful list of products that keep the decibels down, so you can flush the loo in the middle of the night without waking the baby.
You may feel largely inured to it; but when you think about it, wouldn't it be nice to be able to sleep through someone in the house taking a crack of dawn shower before they rush off to the airport? or not to feel guilty if you have to flush the loo at 3am because it'll wake everyone up? Think how nice it would be to hear the radio even when your partner is blowdrying their hair...
Quiet Bathroom is raising awareness of products that don't thunder, churn, roar and whoosh, so you can enjoy a more restful time in the bathroom and other people in the house won't be disturbed by your showering and loo flushing.
Here are some of the products on the list of Quiet Mark-approved products which you might want to consider when you next refurbish the bathroom or have to replace products.
1. Quiet flush toilet: GROHE Rapid SL
You don’t have to notify your family of every flush so why not invest in a quiet flush?
GROHE’s Rapid SL system offers concealed installation and whisper-quiet flush.
2. Quiet Shower: Salamander Homeboost pump
Is your shower pump destroying the experience of your brief moment of peace in the shower? If so, you don’t have to put up with it.
The Salamander Homeboost is a quiet operation shower pump designed to help if you're experiencing poor water pressure or flow either directly via your boiler or mains pressure-fed heating system.
Extractor fans
Why put up with a loud extractor fan when you can install a quiet one. Choose from an extensive list of fans awarded the Quiet Mark:
AirFlow
QuietAir 120
QuietAir 100
Soler-Palau
TD - Silent
Silent Design 100
Vent-Axia
Lo-Carbon Centra
Silent Fan
XpelAir
Silent Contour - round
Silent Contour - square
Flooring: British Gypsum silent floor
Clickety-clack floors can drive you - and anyone living underneath you - bonkers.
British Gypsum's Silent Floor is a new system that exceeds the typical house floor performance by 15dB, greatly improving the acoustic environment..which means it absorbs noise so things are a lot quieter within the home. Or if they're loud in one room, the sound won't travel to the next.
Quiet hair dryer: Bio-ionic hair dryer
Hairdryers can be deafening and they drown out the radio. But not so the lightweight Bio-ionic dryer, which, we're told, emits negative ions and far infrared energy...
Hand dryer: Savortex BabyCurve
BabyCurve is the first electric hand dryer for the home. It gives the towel a run for its money...it's understood to be the most energy-efficient as well as quiet hand dryer which can dry up to 49 pairs of hands for as little as one pence.
About QUIET MARK
Since launching in three years ago, Quiet Mark has helped create demand for use of quieter technology in our homes, in workplaces and outdoors. Quiet Mark sprang from the response to complaints received by the Noise Abatement Society’s 24/7 national noise help-line, concerning the volume of excessive noise made by household tools and appliances. Quiet Mark has established a universal symbol and it works to help industry develop quieter products.
