Weird humming sound

Yes. I hear humming noises all the time.

Well, if it was from the power mains, it would be 60 Hz, or a multiple of it. Is the sound loudest in any particular room? Could it be a pilot light? I know the furnace in my previous house had a pilot light that hummed, and could easily have been around 200 Hz. I'm not absolutely sure whether it was the flame itself or maybe the pressure regulator in the burner safety control, but it produced a distinct "humming" sound.

Hmm (pun intended), 65 dB. That's fairly loud, can't you determine the source? There are non-motorized devices that emit sounds. Some electronic equipment have switching power supplies that can emit audible sounds although their main switching frequency is supposed to be ultrasonic. There could also be ventilation devices, even passive, that can generate sounds, like organ pipes. Do you have a continuous wind at this location? Could it be a sewer vent stack that is humming like blowing on a jug?

The house I live in now has a somewhat unpleasant acoustic response to it. I think I know what it is, but I don't think there's an easy fix. It has venting openings in the soffit for the roof. (Cathedral ceilings throughout and no attic.) Cars on the road, and sometimes the wind, if it is just the right direction and speed, can excite a weak resonance in the vent space, and you get the effect that a window is open letting all the tire noise or wind noise inside. I don't know if this effect is related to what you are experiencing. This is also an effect where you can't really tell where it is coming from, as it is the sum of ALL the roof vent spaces, so you hear it anywhere on the main level, but not in the basement.

Jon

Boy, oh boy, is HE lucky! Or, he has a GOOD lawyer!

Jon

Ahh, that is a strong possibility. Last house I lived at, there was a water main problem the city was watching. One time the fire dept was running a pumper off a hydrant a few houses down, and the whole house hummed - loudly! I knew it was coming through the water main because it was clearly radiating from every water appliance in the house.

If there is a sewage pump in the neigborhood, it could be radiating noise through the sewer mains, or just through the ground. Not too many places have neighborhood potable water booter pumps, but in a case of broken mains, upgrades to the mains, etc. these things are sometimes put in place to maintain supply pressure from emergency cross-connections until the repairs are complete. (I've seen everything from 2 MILES of

3" fire hoses running through everyone's front yards to fire pumpers sitting in the middle of a neigborhood relaying drinking water to an area where the feeder main had gone out.)

Jon

This is pretty interesting, I would not have imagined this number of noise producing objects in and around a house.

JTMcC

I too have noticed a weird sort of humming noise, can happen anywhere in the house, mainly when I stop for a moment to relax. It took me a while, but I eventually tracked it down to my wife's moterised jaw nagging at me!!

regards,

John

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 11:14:22 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (dann mann) wrote something ......and in reply I say!:

I take this seriously. It can be extremely annoying to those with good hearing.

200 Hz is quite high. It could be a harmonic of mains though.

Has anyone else heard this sound?

There are noises that strike certain people more than others, that disappear when there is _any_ other sound. This sound may still be a more widespread thing, but when you go outside, you get wind (sorry, nothing personal), traffic etc. This, even at a very low level, can mask some of these hums.

We have one around us. We think it's trains in the distance. it drives me nuts sometimes, but my wife and others can hardly hear it. I hasten to add that some other people _have_ heard it! But even the slightest noise will hide it, even from me.

You need to go outside early on a really still morning. If you cannot hear it, then it's more likely to be in the house. Unfortunately it could be the house resonating to something else.

If you want to analyse the sound, maybe some trial or free software on a PC with a sound card and a mic can actually record it and then work out what freq it is. At the very least, if you can record it, it is not just tinitus! You can also record outside, then filter out all freqs except those very near to the sound. This will show if it's outside, but masked.

**************************************************** sorry remove ns from my header address to reply via email

I was frightened by the idea of a conspiracy that was causing it all. But then I was terrified that maybe there was no plan, really. Is this unpleasant mess all a mistake?

I found ours by accident. The transformer was simply mounted to the side of one of the floor joists, approximately underneath the location of the doorbell chime. It would have been obvious and accessible in the house as built. Then someone finished part of the basement, mounting an acoustic tile ceiling under the joists and effectively hiding the transformer.

I found it only because a removed a light fixture from that ceiling and stuck my head up inside, between the joists, and the transformer happened to be between the same pair of joists as the light fixture.

Dave

A strange one near me.....I noticed in a trailer park down the road a ways that one of the mobile homes had a 3 sided plywood wall built around it about 12 feet high. The open side was facing away from the road nearby. Earlier at times, I had noticed a guy out my way in an older car with clothes piled up inside the car up to the window level, except where the driver was sitting, and he was wearing earmuffs. I figured he was one of the "special" types you sometimes run into, so shrugged it off. One day I ran into the guy who operates the park and asked him about the wall. It turns out that the muffs guy lives there, and he has supersensitive hearing. The wall buffers car sounds, and the clothes are his sound deadener when he's driving his car. That must be a rough life.

RJ

Hey Speff,

Hmmm... in Windsor in the big subdivision where we lived we had complete underground electric service, and the transformers were all in vaults under somebodies front lawns, including the cul-de-sac across from us.

Here in Bothwell, we have overhead lines and pole mounted transformers, but underground from the poles to the homes.

Good idea for Dann to try shutting off the power for a few minutes and see if the noise disappears. I have heard AC wall clocks "humm" and resonate pretty loud, and door-bell or furnace transformers too, but they are all "60 cycle" sounds I recognize. Dann seems to suggest that he is familiar with that sort of noise, and this ain't it. In San Diego, he probably doesn't have a furnace mounted drum humidifier, but I've heard both the motor and/or the bearings squeak on them.

We have a turbine fan mounted on our roof here, to vent the attic space. It has a decided hum to it when it runs. Or it did have, that is it did until recently, when it got "bent" a bit somehow, and now it doesn't hum, but ticks at each revolution. Nowhere near the 120 or

200HZ though.

Some years back we installed two economy (read AC geared - not DC) elevators in a new 10 floor apartment building in Burlington. About three months after the building was occupied, I got a call to go see the manager. One tenant in an apartment adjacent to one elevator on about the 4th floor, was complaining of a "bang" in the wall every time an elevator started. I knew that he was probably hearing the doors opening or closing at a nearby floor to him. But when I spoke to him, he said no, it was only when one only elevator started to move. Rode the cars and heard nothing, but sure enough from in his apartment his description was correct. Turned out to be a "standing wave" thing in the 3" conduit for the 3 phase riser that fed the splitter at the penthouse for the elevators. I had an electrician come in and pull up on one leg, and move another down, only a couple of inches each, and the "bang" was gone. Only happened when one only of the cars started to move. If one was already running, it didn't do it.

Take care.

Brian Laws>>

What isolation transformer? I thought that was just a European thing, they don't require those up in Canada, do they? I thought you used a GFCI protected receptacle like the rest of North America...

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Yeah, we got termites! My suspicion is that some pipe may be vibrating from resonance to some action with the fluid that it is carrying. I've got a gas pressure regulator about 50' from my home that serves the mobile home park and it will get into a resonance (sometimes it varies in frequency which makes it fun to listen to!) that can barely be heard. I did a trace with a sound level meter and found that the regulator was singing. Note that when using such an instrument that there will be strange null areas as well as odd peaks in the sound level that just won't make sense unless you start measuring the area and calculating what the wavelength relationships are to various walls, etc.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

Not all houses in Canada were built since GFCIs were available. Older houses often have an isolation tranformer rated at about 10 W built into an outlet box or as part of the light fixture in the bathroom.

Dave

They have indoor plumbing in Canada now?

:^)

Jim

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Only in the villages closest to the US border. I don't think the French speaking ones have caught on yet!

As others have suggested, I'd look for the doorbell transformer. They're almost always mounted on a workbox that's nailed to a floor joist. If the nails or transformer mounting screws are a little loose, the hum is transmitted through the floor joist and can be quite loud.

-Carl

A colony of bees or wasps might make such a noise. They fan air around in their colony with beating wings from bees who anchor themselves at strategic places in the colony. You might look around the outside for bee activity around the outside of your house. If you find unusual activity, then you may have a colony in a wall somewhere.

Brownnsharp

Hey guys I think I found the noise. The electric meter really hums. Most meters I have been around were virtually silent. Maybe this one has a bad bearing. I usually only have the TV on and no other lights or appliances. Would a poorly grounded meter be apt to hum like that? . Wasn't the doorbell transformer and I have pilotless everything. I've learned alot from this discussion as usual. Thanks. Dan

Yes! But it keeps freezing in that part of the igloo!