Speaker
Description
Air-to-water heat pumps are increasingly used for heating, making their acoustic emissions an important factor in public acceptance. The perceived annoyance of heat pump noise depends not only on the sound characteristics of the unit but also on the installation location. The aim of this study was to investigate how simulated propagation scenarios (garden, living room with tilted window, and free-field reference), loudness conditions (original loudness and equal loudness), and contextual framing (own heat pump vs neighbour’s heat pump) affect the short-term annoyance of heat pump noise. A listening experiment was conducted in which participants rated the annoyance of heat pump stimuli using an 11-point rating scale. The stimuli are from recordings of one heat pump in two different operating conditions. The results show clear differences in the annoyance ratings between the auralised scenarios, with lower ratings observed in the living room scenario than in the garden scenario. Equalising the loudness of the stimuli and the contextual framing had only minor or no effects on the ratings, and no clear influence of the operating condition was observed. Overall, the results indicate that the auralised scenario has the strongest influence on the perceived short-term annoyance of heat pump noise.