Hum Sound in House

I'm getting a low volume hum in my house. It comes and goes. It's not loud, but it is annoying. When it is humming, I can hear it all over the house. I can also hear it in my attached unheated garage. My wife can hear it also. I have been unable to pin point the source. Anyone ever experience this? Any ideas what it can be? Al

Reply to
Albert Roth
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Hard to pin down.... I've had 2 hums in the house. One was an electric base board heater- not very loud, the other (much louder- the whole house vibrated) was a bad valve on the toilet filler- made ALL the pipes in the house hum around 60 to

100 hertz. It went into sort of a "self oscillation" like a tuba.

Other things to think of- sump/well pumps, air flow over chimneys (like a big pipe organ), neighbor disposing of bodies in a wood chipper........

Reply to
Tom

I lived in a house, about a mile from a factory, where I could hear noise transmitted through the ground (I guess), but only when I was lying in bed. 'Spose I could have heard it with my ear to the floor but never tried that. Don't know what device in the house could be heard all over the house - is it audible at all hours, or possibly just certain days or hours? Got any factories nearby? Audible outdoors? Is the fridge shoved up against the wall or a pipe so it transmits sound to structure?

Reply to
norminn

Check the exhaust fan in the attic.

Reply to
HA HA Budys Here

My furnace is in the attic and sometimes I consider its noise a low-level hum.

Reply to
badgolferman

Refrigerator, freezer?

Reply to
John

If the hum has an audio frequency similar to a cheap vibration type aquarium air pump or to a mains powered vibration massager then your hum has something (equipment, waterpipes) to do with the 60 hertz mains power supply.

Reply to
Klm

Door bell transformer with loose laminations???

Remove TIE to reply.

Reply to
Bill Reynolds

Turn off the main breaker to see if it is electrical and stops. If it stops locate it by shutting down one circut at a time . Or look up Taos Hum, and go into the Twilite Zone

Reply to
m Ransley

There are many possible sources. My problem is usually the clock on the stove.

Anything using AC power, connected to some distribution (heating, water or sewer) system is a good suspect.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Had the same problem. Took six months to solve. Sounded like a 60 cycle hum, blamed something electrical. Finally gave up blaming electrical stuff after a blackout and I still had a hum that came and went with the power off. Found it to be a bad gas meter. It hummed when gas equipment was running and transmitted the sound through the gas pipes. Gas company changed the meter.

Reply to
Eric Tonks

Check your toilet tank. Next time you hear the hum pull up on the ball float to shut of the water valve. IF noise goes away, case closed. Otherwise I'd kill the power to the house to see if it's electrical in nature.

Seriuosly, my house used to have a hum that came and went and I could not localize it. It was a leaky flapper valve in the toilet causing the float valve to open just a smidgen and setting up standing waves in the pipes.

Reply to
jmagerl

I also hear a hum at times. Seems to happen mostly in the cold when the house is sealed up. Dosent sound like 60HZ though. It sometimes also may have like a throbbing or rolling type of effect. I have another problem, I'm the only one that can hear it. My wife and 2 kids dont hear it. I can hear it lying in bed or sittng downstairs in the Familyroom. AT one point it sound mostly like from the left ear only.It kept we awake at nights also. I saw a hearing specialists and had all kinds of tests done. He even did a pressure tests. I thought he was gonna blow my head up. He thought cause of my age he was gonna find hearing loss but did not.Shit I could have told him that since I'm hearing shit no one else does. He then told me it could be from drinking too much coffee, yeah no shit , he really said that. He then said it may be Tinitus. Well anyway then it went away for almost a year. Now it comes back. One week I may hear it and one week I may not.

Reply to
Ron

Why don't you turn every breaker in your house off and see if you can still hear it. If you can, it's doubtful it's coming from in the house! If you can't hear it anymore, turn on a breaker at a time to isolate it to a particular circuit. Could be a transformer, TV, lots of things.

Reply to
Larry Bud

And... uh... what are these voices saying to you??? :-)

Reply to
HA HA Budys Here

I'll support the two main things that have been suggested here:

  1. When the noise is going on, flip the main circuit breaker. If it's electrical, that will kill it and you'll know to hunt it down.

  1. In my case, it was a pipe hum ("foghorn") caused by a "bad" toilet fill valve and exacerbated by a leaking flapper (so, the toilet leaked and the fill valve got a lot more use). The noise was uncanny (loud foghorn!!) and NOT repeat NOT centered at the toilet. But, shutting down the toilet's water supply cutoff reproducibly stopped the noise.

I replaced the ballcock fill valve and the noise was exorcised.

Marc

Reply to
MAG

Very good point. If you shut everything down at the service entrance when you heat it, and it continues, you would rule out all the electrical things. Then I guess you could try shutting off the water.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

We had a similar problem with a intermittant squeaking you could hear throughout the house. It was also a bad gas meter.

Reply to
CAStinneford

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