Vibration with new construction

[GaryMiller]

New Construction in one of our Museums.
Is there a range of acceptable vibration allowed within a Construction area in a Museum regarding damage to objects adjoining the Construction? We will be cutting a stairwell between floors and we are concerned about possible vibration being transferred to other parts of the building.

[T. Ashley McGrew]

I posted your question on the list and got a couple responses. The one that seems best is below:

Hi Ashley,

My director forwarded your message from the PACCIN listserv to me this morning. I can’t help much with mitigation strategies but we do have experience with major construction and demolition work within our building while exhibitions were ongoing in other areas. We worked with Paul Marcon at the Canadian Conservation Institute to set up a testing project which allowed us to set acceptable limits for our contractors to work within. This was followed by a 24-7 monitoring program through the duration of the demo/construction work. Here’s a blog post I wrote about the initial testing we did -https://www.historymuseum.ca/blog/dust-and-vibration-do-matter/ If you have questions I can try to give you some additional information, just let me know.

If you would like to get in touch with the poster you can register for the List Serve and find replies in the archive or contact me directly. My address is listed in the "Who we are" section (there is a tab at the top of the front page of the site) under "Advisory Committee".
cheers
Ashley