Would anyone balk at 68 decibels?

[Mudfrog]

Remind me not to go camping in your neck of the woods ever.

Yep, i too would want to know. One of the reasons we camp is to get away from the noise we have to put up with at home.

Genset noise is iffy for me. I weigh every situation before just automatically firing the Onan up. It is fairly quiet and we do use it when needed. But even at those times, it's used sparingly because i don't like hearing the noise.

[BruceDeville]

68 db may look low on a chart, but OSHA required hearing protection at 80 db.

[Vicr]

Every once in a while a loud generator operator will wake up in the morning and it won't start! Sparkplug's gone, wonder how that happened??

[birddog2you]

Wow! I would never.... Might encounter an old vet like me with PTSD.

[bruce91]

Originally Posted by Bigd9

Shoot, my wife talks louder than 68 db!

And my wife needs to talk louder than 68db for me, most times more than once.

[BFlinn181]

Originally Posted by BruceDeville

68 db may look low on a chart, but OSHA required hearing protection at 80 db.

As has already been stated, dB are a logarithmic unit, as you go from one number to the next, the amount of sound energy increases dramatically. A jump from 68dB to 80 dB is a dramatic rise in sound energy.

[jimmy braden]

Just for reference, 2db is the minimal amount a human audible sensory is capable of detecting and a 10db increase will correspond to a reference of 'double' the -10db value.

[bluepill]

Just came back from a weekend of Dual Sport (ON & OFF pavement) riding with about 100 bikes. Almost all had quiet exhausts, but in general they are considered "quiet" at 80db as rated by the manufactures.



So after a day of riding, you wouldn't expect a contractor genny to raise any eyebrows. It was a very hot weekend, and probably at least 30 gennies running around 10PM trying to keep the RVs cool.

One guy was asked nicely to shut his noisy open frame unit down after 11PM. He said he would "Shortly". 20 minutes later a second request was made. 20 minutes later his fuel petcock mysteriously turned off by itself. When he found out, he complained to the group about "Tampering" with his property. He was then informed that he would get his face tampered with if he started it up again. He was so put out that he left.

On the other hand, one fellow had his Onan RV quiet genny die out on him, so he went home and got his open frame genny. He came back with a sheet of plywood and some stakes. He positioned the genny as far as possible from his trailer and erected the plywood to reflect the noise away from the campsite. It actually didn't sound much louder than his Onan. It's all a matter of attitude.

[DryCreek]

Originally Posted by jimmy braden

Just for reference, 2db is the minimal amount a human audible sensory is capable of detecting and a 10db increase will correspond to a reference of 'double' the -10db value.

Heh, when you're 12?

My hearing is bad. I have to take a hearing test annually where I work. Sometimes it takes two tries to get back to the baseline and "pass" the test.

I rue the days when I was young and dumb and didn't wear hearing protection while serving in the Navy. I have a nice tinnitus frequency that probably matches the whine of the steam turbine generators (SSTG's) from "da boat" (SSN702).

ETA - I will say that while discussing generators, sound levels played a deciding factor when we had narrowed our Class A choices down to two units. The newer one with far fewer miles had a Generac. It was LOUD compared to the Onan in the year older and three-times-the-mileage Winnebago we ended up buying (there were other reasons too).