I moved here from Minneapolis, another city with an urban airport. The Minnesota Airport Authority worked with vendors to find ways to reduce noise inside of homes under the flight paths to and from the airport.

One of the techniques used in Minnesota to reduce airplane noise was to install windows with an increased Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating. Check out http://www.sota.ca/stc_info.htm for information on STC values. Engineers at Marvin Windows did much of the research used in the Minnesota sound abatement approaches.

My townhome in Rosslyn was built in 1999 and the builder used "builder grade" double-hung windows that have two panes of glass, but were made of light-weight wood and thin glass. The STC of these windows was somewhere around 15 or 20. I worked with an engineer at Marvin Windows to figure out the best way to reduce airplane noise and his suggestions were to replace the entire windows with new windows made of dense hardwood, use two different thickness glass panes, and fill the space between the panes with argone. This would provide an STC of around 33. Adding a storm window would further reduce the noise to an STC of 43. The two different thickness glass panes help since each thickness of glass allows sound transmission of particular frequencies. By using two different thicknesses more frequency range is blocked.

I had all the windows and the sliding glass doors in my townhouse replaced during April, 2004, with Marvin Ultimate Clad double hung windows and doors. On the rear of the townhouse I used the Marvin combination windows that incorporate storm panes as part of the unit. I'm happy to report that the airplane noise has dropped substantially. You can still hear the planes but the noise is in the background rather than the foreground and it doesn't drown out conversations and telephone calls.