Road noise and building code

I recently moved into a new apartment in South West of Sydney.

The apartment block is next to a major road (mostly likely arterial). The apartment is up on the third floor and two bedrooms faces the main road.

The noise level from the road has caused significant issue to my resting at night even with windows and door completely shut (with no air flow).

I subsequently contacted the council in searching for more answer with regard to rules and regulation around the acceptable/minimum acoustic standard for residential building next to main roads and testing undertaken to certify my apartment is fit and proper for occupying.

Council advised that the relevant certificates issued show that the living room and bedrooms have met the building standard and were undertaken by an independent third party (I was provided with the name and contact numnber of the company).

According to my research and information council provided, the general rule for noise level threshold is 40db for living room and 35 db for bedrooms measured in the middle of the room with a minimum 10% of the window open for air flows. My understanding is that the threshold is measued to be the top 10 percentile hourly noise measurements in db over two periods of the day i.e. 7am to 10pm (14 hours) and 10pm to 7am (10 hours).

Without speculating and questioning the independence and robustness of the certificate, I googled for noise/sound devices and discovered a number of sound meter apps available. I downloaded several apps and tested them to measure the noise level in my bedroom according to the criteria (i.e. in the middle of the room with a min. 10% of window open) as suggested in the building standard.

Based on the sound meter apps, it shows a consistent noise level across difference devices tested significantly higher (in the order of 60 to 70 db) than the 35db for bedroom and 40db in the living room notwithstanding it is measured around 7pm-8pm on a weekday.

The government legislation I referred to is per the following link.

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/noise/roadnoise.pdf

(It was subsequently replaced by the NSW Road Noise Policy effective 1 July 2011 with some transition arrangement. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/noise/2011236nswroadnoisepolicy.pdf).

I haven’t dwell into the new legislation and believe it is not signficantly different to the predecessor.

Council has made it clear that the information provided so far is the best they can do. Now I am a bit lost at what the next step should be and whether there is any independent authority that I can escalate this matter to local council.

I am thinking undertaking an independent acoustic testing by certified professionals to provide stronger evidence.

I wonder if the flat chat can provide more direction or avenues to pursue this further.