How to reduce noise levels in your workshop

By Josh West

Every good workshop makes safety a top priority. But with so many obvious risks around heavy machinery and vehicles, it’s easy to forget about the long-term exposure to high noise levels in your workshop.

The HSE has specific regulations around workplace noise limits, and it’s up to you put the right measures and controls in place to reduce it.

Here’s how you can start to minimise the noise levels in your workshop:

 

Plan for noise in your workshop layout

Some workplace noise can’t be avoided. But you can take steps to keep that noise contained and separate.

If you’re planning a new workshop (or redesigning an old layout), you should make workshop noise reduction an important part of how you lay out your workstations.

That means thinking about:

  • Placing high-noise activities behind doors or around corners
  • Keeping noisy workstations far away from the busiest areas of foot traffic
  • Spreading louder workstations away from each other — when noise adds together, it can push you over the legal limits.

As well as working to reduce the total noise, you should also be thinking about the time spent in that noise. When you halve the time spent in a noisy area, you’re reducing the noise exposure by 3dB.

So as well as keeping loud activities away from people, you should also keep them away from the entrance and exit to your workshop, as well as any central areas where people need to travel through.

 

Isolate noisy workstations

If you can’t reduce workshop noise levels by rearranging the layout, you can make some additional tweaks to help contain the noise produced.

That could mean:

  • Placing screens or barriers around loud equipment to create a partial enclosure
  • Using acoustic sealant on any gaps in windows or doors to prevent sound leaking through
  • Mounting equipment on anti-vibration pads to contain the noise of vibration
  • Install acoustic panels on walls (or ceilings) designed to absorb excess sound.

 

Choose low-noise equipment

Some types of equipment are fundamentally noisy, like air compressors or air-operated pit jacks.

But because it’s a known problem, it’s something manufacturers are focused on reducing — which means the right piece of kit is designed with noise reduction in mind.

Our ABAC Spin Compressor, for example, is specifically designed for an extremely low noise level, producing only 61–68db(A). As a point of comparison, that’s about as loud as an air conditioner, which makes a huge difference to the quality of life (and safety) of your workers.

 

Choose hand tools where you can

We see some workshops using the most powerful and noisy tools for the smallest and least-critical jobs. In many cases, it’s overkill — and a quieter hand tool would do the same job.

You could see significant noise reduction in your workshop by switching:

 

Keep your equipment maintained

Even the quietest bits of kit can get louder over time, as their condition degrades and they stop running smoothly.

You should be looking out for:

  • Loose parts or bolts that cause vibration and rattling
  • A lack of lubrication that creates grinding in the moving parts
  • Bent or damaged parts that cause unnecessary friction.

When your equipment is well-maintained, with regular service visits from a qualified engineer, it runs exactly as it was designed — with minimal friction, minimal impact, and minimal noise.