Which is the quietest and best Compressor?

[pembrokeflyingnurse]

Good Morning. I am looking for a quiet compressor that allows me to use in a residential area. Preferably I would like to visit a shop. Does any one have any advice. I have the equipment to go with it. Thanks, Sue

[Ptychodus04]

Oil lubricated compressors are significantly quieter than maintenance free compressors but are still very loud. Quincy makes a 2 stage compressor that is only 80 decibels. That's not much louder than an excited conversation. It comes with quite a price tag and may not be available in the UK though.

[jpc]

rotary screw air compressors are supposed to be relatively quiet and mainteneance free, but they are very expensive compared to your typical noisy compressors mentioned above by Ptych

[siteseer]

Yeah, I'm afraid we all have to live with noisy compressors.  One of my friends lives in a residential area so he runs it between 12 and 6pm as a rule.  None of his neighbors have complained.  He's lucky no one works nights on his street but he could adjust a couple of hours either way if anyone did.

[pembrokeflyingnurse]

Thank you so much for upur comments.  Very useful. 

[Ptychodus04]

I prep after 7:00 AM and end before 10:00 PM as a rule. When my compressor is running, it can barely be heard at my neighbors’ fence on either side and across the alley. The houses in my neighborhood aren’t spaced far apart but I’m sure they are not nearly as close as other places in the world. I’ve never had one of my neighbors complain about the noise. 
 

There are ways to reduce the noise of the compressor but they have a nominal effect. I built a muffler for the air intake. It’s just a bit of pipe stuffed with dish scrubbing pads threaded into the intake manifold. It helped somewhat but not as much as I would have liked. The best avenue is isolation. If you put enough material between your exterior wall and the compressor, they won’t hear it. I plan to insulate my exterior garage door to eventually help with this. At some point in the future, I’ll build a ventilated closet for the unit (as soon as this one dies and I get a bigger compressor) so my wife can’t hear it inside the house while I’m happily working away in the lab. She’s the one who suffers the most from my work.