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Show Wednesday, March 25. Page 9 J 998, THE DAILY HERALD, Home txpo. Provo, Utah Living with noise is all in the ear of the beholder of fun to sit in my sun room (in the front of the apartment) and watch when it is snowing. I sit with a cup of tea and watch the traffic jams." Real estate agents point out that Lake Shore Drive is a different animal because it has a lower speed limit and it prohibits the truck traffic that, to put it kindly, enlivens other Chicago area roads and expressways. What Lake Shore Drive has, of course, is access and that view, although in the case of second-floo- r Stein's unit ("When there aren't too many leaves on the trees, I can actually see the lake, sort of," she said with a laugh), a convenient location and a private terrace in the back were the top draws. Agents who have experience selling Chicago Gold Coast addresses also suggest that, depending on the acoustic effects of buildings that surround it, a given condominium can seem noisier on a higher floor than a lower one. By MARY UMBERGER Chicago Tribune CHICAGO Marie Everett recalls that it began at 5 a.m. Every day. "You didn't need an alarm clock," she says of the trucks that rumbled down the road behind her home in Petal uma, Calif "We were six houses down from an intersection. As they would come barreling down the highway, they would start hitting their brakes at a point about even with our house," which she estimates sat about 30 feet from the roadway. She said the noise continued unabated through most of every day. Everett, a former Chicagoan, said she "kind of got used to it," but her husband never did. "It would always wake him up, and then he would wake me up complaining about it." The Everetts didn't start out with this problem when they y bought their home in a fairly new subdivision in 1988. At the time, the behind their thoroughfare Selling for less house was just another quiet Marie Everett estimates that country road, she recalls. house her backing onto the "But the area was growing, , solid development," she said, and noisy road in Petaiuma, Calif., sold for about $12,000 less than simultaneously, "for whatever elseTeason, the truckers discovered comparable properties where subdivision in that her this road was a shortcut that :from Petaiuma over to Sonoma," sold in the months before hers. She surmises that her house a distance of about 20 miles. sold because it was the they put the finally one available at the time only house on the market in 1995, and dutifully checked the for her buyers, who had set boxes on the their sights on her particular appropriate California sellers' disclosure statement that the house had a ."noise nuisance." And there the house sat, unsold, for almost two years. On New Year's Eve, 1996, they got their first and only offer. They dickered over the terms a bit and then took it. single-famil- Noise-wear- Barbara Stein tion (Or, year-round- development. Some might say that those buyers were viewing "location" in the greater scheme of things. For instance, Ferris Homes is marketing 14 sites for custom homes in Northbrook, 111., where company president Andrew Ferris is counting on buyers who value having a Northbrook address, period, even one that is just off the Tri-Sta- te Tollway. "The lack of new housing in Northbrook makes this an excellent site," Ferris said of the custom homes his firm intends to build on lots that range from to about half about an acre. Prices begin at $800,000 for house and lot. Since sales began last summer, there has been one sale, he said. Ferris said the overall development will include much in the way of berms and landscaping to improve both the sound quality and the views. In recent years, these have one-quart- er become common noise-reductio- n techniques among builders and developers, some of whom do it voluntarily to enhance sales, though sometimes such y, measures are mandated local governments. 1990 National Institutes of Health report concluded that there's a; "remarkably broad range of differences in sensitivity to any given noise exposure," possibly physiological in nature. ; Research may never be con-- ; elusive because no one has yet devised a Richter scale for "irri-- ; ""Shrubs and trees are worth little as tools for noise control," the stated. agency has "Effective belts of trees must be at least 50 feet tall, must be in a continuous strip 75 to 100 feet deep, must have dense foliage down to the ground, and must be evergreen to provide protec- "I love it. I am an urban person. It's actually sort of fun to sit in my sun room and watch when it is snowing. I sit with a cup of tea and watch the traffic jams." indi-vidu- tation." ." Noise walls Technical studies have suggested that properly designed noise walls berms and can reduce sounds by 15 to 20 decibels (abbreviated dB), which is a unit of sound measurement. Although there are many variables in measuring sound, a fair generalization might be that "normal, relaxed conversation" would measure 60 dB, highway traffic from about 50 feet away would be 70 dB and a vacuum cleaner would weigh in at 80 dB. Because of the logarithmic nature of the measurement, an increase of 10 dB amounts to a doubling of loudness; conversely, when the distance is doubled from a point source, the sound level drops 6 dB, according to Pollution Minnesota the that-overloo- the The MPCA, which includes noise among the pollution conditions it studies, also holds s' s, can-sta- a very quiet." c. However, opinion is divided. A JHiV9ns3 JSaiggpQ- Carpat Criom-Dr- y ct It has concluded that although noise can be reduced by buffers such as open space and by barriers such as walls or berms, landscaping falls into the "close, but no cigar" category. "Chem-br- Don't mind? If the world is divisible into those (two types of people (who are willing to live on busy roads and those who aren't it's safe to say that the Everetts, who now live on a hillside considerably removed from any street, have made their draw, once and forever. But there are lots of people who say they don't mind such , locations at all, for reasons that vary from economic considerations to a yearning for a sense of excitement. Traffic noise, apparently, is in the ear of the beholder. One multilane sound person's machine can be another person's dream address. ' Take Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, for instance: Each day, an average of 136,000 vehicles use the part of the roadway that runs between Belmont Avenue and Irving Park Road, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation. In addition, an average of 24,000 cars a day travel alongside it on the Inner all of them essentially Drive in the front yard of Barbara Stein, who has lived for four years on the second floor of a prestigious p building. "This is no noisier than where we lived before," said Stein, adding that although her former residence, a townhouse in the Hyde Park neighborhood, was on a residential street, it had a lot of bus traffic. "I didn't really think (traffic jnoise) was a big issue when we moved here, although the part of the unit that is nearest) the most traffic is where I usually have the windows closed in summer. f "I love it. I am an urban person," she said. "It's actually sort co-o- - - 6 J -i WM ',11 ItT .,'ra. .1 ft i I i M , ' I I I ' - i ". 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"It is a common misconception that you can adjust to noise by ignoring it or getting used to it," according to an agency report. "The ear never closes and is continually responding to sound, even during sleep." Stcsr Edens Expressway. "Going there now to visit my dad, I don't think I could live there again," she said of the traffic noise. "I can't stand it." Ear of the beholder highway-dweller- - Debbie Cleven grew up in Skokie, 111., in a house as the Professional Builder trade journal put it more simply, "You might need a whole forest to make any impact") by al - |