Board Responds to Irrigation Pump Noise Concerns

Last month, one of the community’s two irrigation pumps, which broke in late January and led to a reduced watering schedule for more than two months, was finally repaired. But those repairs weren’t without setback.

Director Butch Matsanka said Thursday night that residents living in the area of the pump system—which sits behind a grouping of trees along the southern bank of Watercrest’s southwest pond—reached out to the HOA with concerns of an increase in noise levels emanating from the newly fixed system. He said that prompted Board Vice President Sam Ferguson to conduct a noise study.

With the 30-horsepower pumps now set to run at 60psi, Ferguson found noise levels to be 68 decibels at the pumps and 44 decibels at 9852 Haze Drive, where the primary concern with noise levels exists.

For comparison, Yale University’s Department of Environmental Health & Safety lists a suburban area at night as being 40 decibels, a refrigerator being 55 decibels, a business office being 60-65 decibels, a normal conversation being 60-70 decibels and a vacuum cleaner being 75 decibels.

Ferguson said the noise from the system comes primarily from the vents, which cannot be blocked.

“The problem with this noise is that it’s going to come out because of those ventilation holes,” he said. “It’s not like you can just cover them up.”

But, Ferguson said, much of the perceivable noise is that of traffic in the area. He noted that with the pumps shut off, ambient noise levels were measured to be 55 decibels at the pumps.

“That’s really what’s driving a lot of the noise is the road noise,” Ferguson said. “You can see these readings go up and down based on what’s happening on the street.”

Matsanka, who lives about 200 feet from the pump system, and Director John DeYoung, who lives about 250 feet from the pump system, both admitted they can’t hear the system from their homes.

President Pat Vitek said he felt the problem centers on the ambiguity of what the noise levels were prior to the system going offline in January versus what those levels are now.

“That really is the issue,” he said. “We don’t know how loud it was before.”

One resident spoke up on behalf of the resident living at 9852 Haze, noting that the homeowner is “having a great deal of disruption in her life as a result of the sound of this pump going on.”

The resident said her friend, who was out of town at the time of Thursday night’s meeting, has never experienced issues with noise in the last five years.

“If it had been an issue, she would have definitely said something about it,” she said. “When you’re disrupting someone’s life like that … it’s a problem and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be corrected.”

The resident pointed out that her friend has her house up for sale and has “lost potential buyers as a result of this issue.”

Vitek said that information was valuable to the Board.

“That’s what we need to hear,” he said.

After about a half hour of discussion on the matter Thursday night, Landscape Committee Vice Chairwoman Sheryl pushed for the Board to take action, pointing out that while she doesn’t live near the pump, she empathizes with residents who do.

“I can understand that they’re upset,” she said. “I think that the right thing to do is to address it for those people that live there.”

In its attempts to decrease sound levels, the HOA has already had the pump pressure lowered from 65 to 60psi, greased the pumps and installed insulation. Ferguson said each of those adjustments decreased noise levels by 2 decibels.

But the Board considered two options Thursday that would quell the noise even more.

One of those options was to hire a contractor to install an 18-by-24-foot, 6-foot-tall chain link fence with Acoustiblok soundproofing material for a projected cost of about $10,000.

“We could do something like that but it’s a lot of money,” Matsanka said.

The other option, which the Board ultimately decided to pursue, involves planting additional vegetation around the pump system to block the gaps that were left by Hurricane Ian’s devastation in September 2022. Matsanka specified the hurricane knocked down “many” areca palms there.

“There are openings at the bottom all the way around now and I know a lot of that noise is getting through,” he said.

Landscape Committee Chairman Bob Tegowski suggested the Board look at planting pitch apple, which, he said, is dense in nature.

The Landscape Committee vice chairwoman said she would reach out to the owner of Serenity Scapes—the company currently working on the north fence project—to see if the company could install vegetation around the pump system.

“We could probably get him out pretty quick and we would just have to ask him how big do these plants need to be,” she said.

Ferguson said the Board could approve funds for that project outside of a regular Board meeting “if we get a quote that we can move forward with.”

Matsanka ended the discussion by reassuring the resident who spoke on behalf of the concerned homeowner at 9852 Haze.

“This is the next step,” he said. “We’re going to try this first.”

Above is a video of the pump system taken on April 29.

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