Everything we know about how loud this will be.
Including the part we don't know yet. An acoustical engineer who doesn't work for us is measuring, and we'll publish what they find.
- Measured at
- The property line
- Measured by
- An independent engineer
- If it doesn't pass
- We don't open
We're not asking you to believe our number. We're asking someone else to produce it.
Any applicant can commission a study that says what they want. The difference here is the sequence: the study is a condition of approval, performed by an engineer we don't control, measured at the property line rather than at the equipment. If it doesn't pass, we don't open. That's not a courtesy — it's the mechanism, and we asked for it.
Illustrative.
What actually makes the noise
It's the cooling equipment — chillers with fans on top, sitting outside. Not the computing itself, which is silent.
The fans run at variable speed, which matters more than it sounds. Fixed-speed equipment cycles on and off, and it's the surge that carries. These modulate: at low load the fans idle rather than stop, so the sound stays flat instead of spiking.
What happens at night
The chillers carry a factory control called SilentNight. It exists because cities have nighttime noise ordinances — the manufacturer built it for exactly this situation, and it holds the equipment to a lower sound output on a time-of-day schedule.
That's a setting, though. A setting is a thing we could change. The reason to trust the nighttime number isn't the feature — it's that the limit is measured at your property line and written into the approval.
Illustrative time-of-day control.
Illustrative.
The question about the I-75 wall
Someone asked at the July meeting whether sound would bounce off the highway wall and back toward the homes. Nobody on our side answered it that night.
The engineering answer is that the wall is sound-attenuating — it absorbs and deflects upward rather than returning sound at the angle it arrived. But that's still us telling you something. The study now models reflection off that wall specifically, because the question was asked, and that result goes on this page whatever it says.
Where the equipment sits
The yard faces I-75, not the neighborhood. The ground rises toward the rear buffer, which puts the equipment downhill of the homes behind the property. The mature trees stay.
We also stopped treating a boundary fence as the answer. A fence at the property line does very little for sound. The proposal now encloses the chiller yard itself in a sound-attenuating barrier — stopping noise where it starts rather than where it arrives.
Facing I-75, downhill of the homes.
The numbers, and where they'll come from.
| Claim | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling equipment | Air-cooled screw chillers, variable-speed | Equipment spec |
| Nighttime sound control | SilentNight, factory option | Equipment spec |
| Low-noise fans and acoustic treatment | Standard configuration | Equipment spec |
| Sound limit at the property line | — | Pending — independent study |
| Measured nighttime level | — | Pending — independent study |
| Ambient level from I-75 | — | Pending — independent study |
Three blanks. We could fill them today with figures that sound reassuring, and you'd have no way to check. The study is being performed by an engineer who doesn't work for us, and we'll publish it here when it lands — including if it says something we don't like.
We'll publish it the day it arrives.
If you want the study when it lands rather than when we get around to it, ask and we'll send it. Answers to questions go on this page either way.