OT -The Hum

[Rod]

What is polygonum doing posting at this silly time? Well ? I can't get back to sleep because of a noise. For some time now (at least months) I have been noticing a strange noise. Searching around, one the better descriptions appears on Wiki:

For a moment, I think it is a distant aircraft ? which I expect to get louder and then fade away ? but it just continues.

For a while I think it is the fridge or the freezer ? but investigation, even switching them off, doesn?t change the sound. Or the central heating. Or the gas or electric meters. Or the router. Or the printer. Or the ioniser. Or the clock on the oven.

For even longer I traipse round the house expecting it to be louder in one room than another. And maybe it is a little. But I hear it everywhere and am never sure whether variations are me or it.

For a bit longer I try to convince myself that it is a bass component to my tinnitus. But I cannot do so. It reduces immediately I go outside and starts up again the moment I come back inside.

Any foreground sounds are enough to knock the hum out. But the moment the environment is quiet again it returns.

Sometimes I can go without hearing the hum for hours ? maybe days. (Funny, you really notice it is there but not when it disappears so it is difficult to keep track of.)

Oh ? and partner never hears the hum. In every other way we seem to have very similar sensitivity to sounds so I am constantly surprised that she cannot hear it at all. Ever.

Every other sound I hear I feel I can interpret ? at least if they go on long enough. I hear washing machines, lawn mowers, cars, aircraft, birds, rain, wind, cats, CFLs, hum from battery chargers, and on and on. This is the only thing that completely defeats me.

Any ideas?

A tired, sleepy polygonum.

[RW]

It's the blood inside yer head................

Lobotomy would cure it.

[Rod]

And in the spirit of uk.d-i-y I would wish to follow the great Phnieas Gauge [1] in doing my own. But homemade explosives are somewhat frowned on in the UK these days. Especially in High Wycombe. So I guess is it is the Bosch [2] with a hole cutter to get started...

[1] [2]

[Geoff]

[snip]

House mains electricity?

[Rod]

Actually it was in oart the fact of the power cut on Tuesday that triggered my post. I was sitting here thinking that if there was a power cut now, I would be able to categorically eliminate that. But, in truth, I am as sure as I can be that it is not.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Flick the whole electricity system off.

That will at least identify whether it is something electrical on your circuit.

[Terry Fields]

A few months ago I was trying to trace the source of some interference to MW radio. Being unable to locate a source indoors or nearby outside, I turned the electricity off at the main switch. What surprised me was how 'dead' the house was with no electicity, although there were no pervasive noises before doing so. Perhaps next time you're awake with this problem, just kill the mains and see what happens. At least it will tell you if the problem lies in your own home....

[Franko]

I'll be keeping tabs on this thread - my hum is outside. I've traipsed the streets at night and the hum always seems to be just around the corner, once I get around the corner it seems to be coming from the next corner and so on - I'll end up at Lands End eventually. The Missus sometimes claims that she hears it but is well able to sleep through it so I suffer alone mostly. Franko.

[Frank Erskine]

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.

[Arfa Daily]

As others have said, first kill your entire house by knocking off the main trip switch on your consumer unit. The only place within your house that any hum could then be coming from, is the electricity meter. With no current being drawn through it, it is highly unlikely that it could be that, however, it *is* inside your house (or garage or in its lttle box on the wall outside), and it *is* the very first thing on your property's circuit.

If killing the whole consumer unit gets rid of the noise, you then need to isolate each individual circuit i.e. upstairs ring, downstairs ring, upstairs lights, downstairs lights, cooker, immersion heater and so on, by popping breakers or pulling fuses one at a time.

Sources of hum are anything with a mains transformer in, or anything with a motor in. Occasionally, heater elements will hum as the resistance wire inside 'rattles' at 50Hz due to the magnetic field that is generated by the passage of current through the element, interacting with the element sheathing or mounting. Hence why your toaster hums.

Candidates might be something in the loft that you've forgotton about - a TV distribution amplifier perhaps - an immersion heater, an electromechanical timeclock for central heating, a transformer within the central heating boiler that's part of the power supply for its control electronics, the power supply for a cordless phone or answer machine, even a lightbulb can sometimes hum.

By applying a logical approach to the problem, it shouldn't be that hard to track down. Good luck with it !

Arfa

[mick]

It may be an idea to check with your neighbour if you live in an adjoining house. Sometimes something like a bell transformer can do similar things if it is screwed to the other side of a wall. The wall acts as a sounding board.

[Tim Downie]

Easy enough to eliminate without waiting for a powercut though. Just turn it off.

Have you thought about noises from the pipework? Occasionally a ballcock can cause groaning noises. Try turning off your water. While you at it, turn the gas off as well, then you'll have eliminated all the services. ;-)

Tim

[Rod]

Drat - I thought the night storage heaters were supposed to be connected before the meter. That's what the man at the pub told me when he connected them up. Isn't that what is economical about Economy 7? :-)

I shall try switching off at a convenient time. One of the problems is that the sound comes and goes - sometimes just a few minutes at a time, sometimes hour after weary hour. So even if I can't hear it, doesn't mean it ain't coming back. :-(

Although I have a lousy sense of pitch, I get the feeling, like in the Wiki article where they mention 56 Hz, that the sound is just a touch higher than 50 Hz. (Perhaps the grid people are trying to recover the hertzes they lost on Tuesday?)

Thank you for all the responses.

[Bob Mannix]

I fear it may be tinnitus related - as you will know, changes in background noise and acoustics (eg out and inside) can change the perception of tinnitus markedly. I had tinnitus for a while (year or so) and it's sh*t. Mine was a ~2kHz tone though, so easy to be sure it wasn't other things. Fortunately my condition arrested and the tinnitus went in the end although I am left with some conductive hearing loss. The Wikipedia article referenced mentions this explanation. A decent set of ear defenders would rule out air borne noise, at least, if the hum is still present.

[The Wanderer]

BTDTGTTS.

Quite a few years ago I was asked to investigate a strange hum that a woman was hearing. She lived in a village just outside Andover, Hants.

She claimed it was electrical, or it could be water-borne, or it could be......

To cut a long, long story short, several visits, sitting listening intently trying to 'hear' this sound - 'Ah, yes; I think I can hear it now. No, no, it's gone again!' - it was finally identified as the fans at a nearby slaughterhouse, about 1/2 mile away across the open fields between her cottage and said slaughterhouse.

Then there was another one, an old cottage, with some internal walls made out of t&g timber. The meter had been fixed to one of these walls, which appeared to have a natural resonance round about 50hz. The din was quite astonishing. Moved the meter round onto an adjacent brick wall, noise gone.

Then there was the old boy who reckoned he could see, hear and catch 'whirls of that electric' dropping off the wires. Just hoped he was using a rubber bucket to catch them.......

[Terry Fields]

They aren't so good at cuting out really low-frequency noises. Perhaps trying a pair of noise-cancelling earphones/earbuds might help?

[Rod]

My 'normal' bilateral tinnitus is, I guess, somewhere in the 14+ KHz range. Annoying I can't even hear that in real sound - though I can hear a bit above 12 KHz. I have had it for around 43 years so am somewhat used to it - not every hour of every day - it has become progressively worse. It is now often the loudest thing around to me unless television or radio is blaring. What puts me off from this being the cause is a) I don't get the hum outside b) I don't get the hum anywhere else. But I do carry the tinnitus everywhere.

Funnily enough, I do actually find it nice to read that someone's tinnitus has disappeared. I am glad for you.

[Bob Mannix]

So was I! Difficult to explain to others what it's like. At least I have a small inkling of what it must be for you - I feel for you and thank my lucky stars mine went. Mine was [almost certainly] caused by a bout of Otosclerosis (bone growing over the eardrum), or at least they had a common cause, along with dizzy spells (think buildings apparently moving like cross channel ferries) and conductive hearing loss. Usually progressive but mine stopped for some reason. Chatting to people - fine. Sitting alone on top of a mountain or lying in bed at night, the bloody noise emerges out of the background to dominate. Insistently.

[Rod]

When I was around 6, we had an old (even for then!) 10" or 12" television. When on it emitted a very high pitched tone. No-one else seemed able to hear it.

And then I realised that, though it really did make a noise, some of it was in my head. Had gradually become more insistent over the years. Good old Radio 4 is about the only thing that I have found which really helps

- maybe as a mask.

I live with a partner who has some degree of ataxia sometimes - and low frequency tinnitus. Not good.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Rod writes

Does happen.

A friend kindly let off a 12 bore shotgun beside my left ear when we were out rabbiting.

Tinnitus lasted about 8 months. My hearing is now down to about 12kHz and I need a couple of extra notches on the volume control beyond what is comfortable for my wife.

I also had a subsequent middle ear infection which the medical profession were less than interested in.

regards

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