Noise protection
According to the Act on the Promotion of Renewable Energies in the Heating Sector, the owners of newly constructed buildings must, with a few exceptions, cover their heating and cooling energy requirements through the proportional use of renewable energies. This also includes environmental heat, which is extracted from the air using air source heat pumps. The use of such systems repeatedly leads to complaints about noise, particularly in newly built housing estates, if the systems are installed close to neighbouring buildings. In terms of immission control law, air source heat pumps as well as air conditioning, cooling and ventilation units and mini block-type thermal power stations are systems within the meaning of Section 3 (5) of the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG). According to Section 22 (1) BImSchG, these systems may only be installed and operated in such a way that
- harmful effects on the environment, including noise, are prevented which are avoidable according to the state of the art, and
- harmful effects on the environment that are unavoidable according to the state of the art are minimised.
In particular, from a noise protection perspective, the cumulative effect of other facilities should be taken into account in order to avoid harmful environmental impacts.
In order to fulfil the principle of mutual consideration when planning the aforementioned devices, the Federal/State Working Group on Immission Control (LAI) published the "Guidelines for improving protection against noise from stationary devices", which should enable planners and building owners to prevent noise problems accordingly.
Practical tips can also be found in the brochure "Do it right! Noise protection for air source heat pumps".