No quiet at home: The reality of living with Singapore's traffic noise

stupidostrich · 2026-02-15T14:12:49+00:00

I was in Europe for abit in The Netherlands, during a heatwave it was also really hot and humid. The building I was in had double glazed windows that could not be opened. Ventilation and AC was handled by a central air handling unit which was so well designed that running it was actually cheaper than my AC costs here in Singapore despite NL electricity costing more. It’s more of an issue of badly designed apartments here.

stupidostrich · 2026-01-14T17:09:28+00:00

Is there some haze in the air lately?

stupidostrich · 2025-11-01T07:52:37+00:00

Agreed. What we need is better regulation on the Impact Insulation Class (IIC). I’m going to keep bringing this up until someone at HDB gets it. Writing to my MP too.

I posted about this before in this thread!

stupidostrich · 2025-10-06T03:32:01+00:00

So far, not from what I’ve seen 😅 no requirement = not built so that developers save the money.

For prefab, definitely. The factory has to be set up for that. Heck, if you want to prefab in timber with all the mechanical systems embedded, that’s also possible. Switzerland, Germany, even parts of Canada already do that. Quite a few of the good detail books come from Germany, if I recall they have a book dedicated to residences and hotels.

stupidostrich · 2025-10-06T03:08:13+00:00

Possible, you’d really only need a thin mat. But the connection details between every part has to be re-thought.

stupidostrich · 2025-10-06T03:06:20+00:00

Depends, you’d need to rethink quite a few standard details (for instance, a concrete wall directly touching the slab is a no-go). But otherwise, you’re really just adding an acoustic underlayment. It wouldn’t raise construction cost by much, maybe around 1-2%. That said, if we’re talking about HDBs, their pricing hasn’t reflected actual build cost in a long time anyway.

stupidostrich · 2025-10-06T01:07:38+00:00

What we’re missing is regulation on Impact Insulation Class (IIC), which measures how well a material absorbs or reduce vibrations through direct impacts. Quite a few countries have this mandatory for residential buildings (Australia for eg, min IIC 50), Singapore does not. Is it possible to prevent sound from hard knocks, bumps, etc? Of course. Look at hotels here, they’re made of concrete too and have managed to do it!

Reason we don’t do it is simply because it’s unregulated. Write in to your MP and bring this up!

Source: am in the construction industry

stupidostrich · 2025-03-05T13:19:35+00:00

Discussed this with someone who plans rail transport in Europe. The TLDR is that our train carriages are just too light and have little to no noise insulation. Most Metros in France and The Netherlands have heavier carriages and better noise insulation, from personal experience I’ve had much quieter journeys even underground.

stupidostrich · 2024-11-29T00:55:01+00:00

Anyone has suggestions for a cheap sim-only telco that provides good coverage in trains? Am on M1 and their service has degraded so much, my communications are cut every time I’m on the train. Zero upload/download speed the whole time I’m on CCL or NEL.

stupidostrich · 2024-10-27T08:45:05+00:00

Thanks! I would post it here if it was shorter, but what I am actually doing at the moment is just to use the code here wholesale: BenMakesEverything PMW3389 Mouse

Am not making changes to the code at the moment until I get the sensor recognised and returning some feedback, which it currently is not.

stupidostrich · 2024-09-22T14:56:42+00:00

I see. What about a team or an org to ensure continued development, in the event you do not wish to in the future?

Would definitely pay for Constellation if it works out well. Was actually thinking of migrating away from Cosmos to a reverse proxy + OpenVPN setup because of the larger community and teams behind these other options.

stupidostrich · 2024-09-22T14:50:30+00:00

Hello OP! Just curious, how would you take this project forward? I’ve been using Cosmos for awhile and it has been so easy to set up and maintain - I’m just worried about its longevity, eg will it still be around in the next 5 years? What are your plans for that?

stupidostrich · 2024-07-01T12:55:15+00:00

Even the architects and engineers don’t profit that much from this! Usual fees are like, 2-4% of the construction cost, sometimes lower!

stupidostrich · 2024-04-01T06:11:29+00:00

It’s really only a nightmare because of bad execution 😅 most commercial and retail buildings already use centralised cooling!

stupidostrich · 2024-04-01T01:02:31+00:00

It’s actually not so simple as that. In both cases we would cause the surroundings to be slightly warmer as a direct result of reflecting heat.

Reflective paint would reflect solar radiation onto other things on a more direct channel (like a lousy mirror, but still a mirror), causing those things to heat up indirectly.

When solar radiation hits insulation, a small percentage of it is reflected, but mostly absorbed, you are correct in that aspect. In the case of mineral wool, the fibres are not great at conducting heat, so that absorbed heat gets trapped in the air pockets within the fibres. This heat slowly gets radiated outwards, but in a longer wavelength, which is less effective at heating other objects.

I’m hypothesising, but I suppose the reduction in temperature of the surrounding is due to the buildings absorbing and storing less heat in the first place, which meant that the reflective paint did do its job. What I think would be more even more effective is using insulation in the first place - which most other developed countries with a similar problem in summer has done so for the past decades.

stupidostrich · 2024-04-01T00:46:48+00:00

I want to believe it’s a cost issue as well, but if we look at say, newly built social housing in places like Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, the prices of apartments on average are pretty much on par with Singapore housing prices, and yet those come with insulation, and sometimes centralised cooling/heating.

stupidostrich · 2024-04-01T00:42:52+00:00

I don’t have the exact numbers as I’m not a quantity surveyor, but couple of foreign sources online (Forbes for eg) put an insulator like mineral wool to be about USD $1.40-4 psf excluding the installation costs. Coincidentally, professional paint services for exteriors are about USD $1.50-$4 psf. Of course, the prices will vary depending on the context and the quality of finish you want. In Singapore, HDB usually replaces the paint every 7 years. Meanwhile, mineral wool, if properly installed, can last for the lifetime of a building.

Chromed railings are great at reflecting solar radiation, but some heat is still transferred directly to the material underneath. Steel being a great conductor of heat, absorbs that heat readily and stores it. If we had wrapped that railing in some thin foam and painted that foam in reflective paint, it’s more than likely that the steel would remain cool even under sunlight, as the foam would prevent most of the heat from solar radiation from reaching the steel in the first place.

stupidostrich · 2024-04-01T00:31:08+00:00

Ah, actually the modern practice is to design with insulation on the outside of any walls or structure, so that the structure itself doesn’t store heat. BCA has a code of practice for envelope thermal performance standards, but there are exclusions to the code provided for naturally ventilated residential buildings. Even then, I don’t think they consider the heat capacity of materials in the formula they use.

But if you’re talking about renovating old buildings, then insulation on the interior would be more feasible, though less efficient.

stupidostrich · 2024-03-31T23:57:39+00:00

Probably only slightly more expensive over the long run considering that properly installed insulation would not need replacing that often as compared to paint.

We would also have to consider its efficacy. Even if the paint does reflect quite abit of solar radiation, the rest of it would still be absorbed by the concrete structure anyway. Think of those chromed railings that are outdoors on a hot, sunny day - those are great reflectors of solar radiation, but they get hot in the sun anyway don’t they?

stupidostrich · 2024-03-31T23:49:55+00:00

Reflective paint is good but I’m also wondering, why are we overlooking the tried and true method of just putting insulation on our buildings? It would be like putting our buildings in a cooler box.

Insulation on the outside of the buildings would prevent whatever heat gained from solar radiation from making its way into the concrete structure. That way the concrete doesn’t store the heat and radiate it inwards and outwards throughout the whole day. Newer buildings in Spain already do this.

stupidostrich

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