[Closed] What's the odd 'throbbing' sound in my house?

Has a neighbor installed an air conditioning unit?

Look in your wife's secret draw.

[i]Look in your wife's secret draw. [/i]

Beat me to it.

Bristol has / had a "hum" , referenced here: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/have-you-heard-the-hum-mystery-of-earths-low-droning-noise-could-now-be-solved-10182111.html

I've certainly heard it, it's kept me awake at night in the past.

Secret dub club in the cellar?

[i]Has a neighbor installed an air conditioning unit?[/i]

Doubt it as I live in the west of Scotland.

Modern house, no cellar. Not one I'm aware of anyway

Is your next door neighbour a complete throbber?

Have a look for a Vauxhall Corsa with LED lights, a sound system that fills the boot, and a 17 year old driver, under the floorboards.
I've lost count of the number of times it's happened to me.

It's all in your head and it's caused by WiFi signals. I sell some bracelets with holograms that absorb the nasty 1 bits leaving the lovely calm 0 bits through. £10, PayPal Gift....

Lots of pumps in houses - fridge, central heating, ventilation unit etc.

Kryton isn't in the kitchen using your microwave to heat up some pudding is he?

[img] https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZbRkBVQ0Pa0kCRTQ3_sPVhu1P_-pSriJKWemn6hld17rL1C8U [/img]

[i]Lots of pumps in houses - fridge, central heating, ventilation unit etc.[/i]

All of which, and the wifi, don't work when the main power supply to the house is switched off.

Got some music on now so it's gone

Are you sure it's in the house? Local windfarm or agricultural machinery?

In all seriousness, I had this as well.
Turned out to be the noisy hard drive in the SKY+ box spinning up and down as it constantly records the last half hour of TV to allow the live pause function to work.

Turn off ALL the power at the consumer unit and see if it stops.

[i]Are you sure it's in the house? Local windfarm or agricultural machinery?[/i]

No, but I can here it clearer in the utility room which backs onto the meter cupboard.

Wind farm is 10 miles away.

What I need is a power cut in the local area.

[i]Turn off ALL the power at the consumer unit and see if it stops.[/i]

Already done.

No, but I can here it clearer in the utility room which backs onto the meter cupboard.

I have the same (previous thread somewhere). Still there, drives me slightly mad sometimes. Council have a noise team who have offered to investigate but it wasn't happening when they came round. Nothing electrical as have switched everything off. There's a mains water pump 50m away from the house but "working as expected" from their report. Whether "working as expected" means an acceptable level of noise, I don't know. Its a real shame - we moved here because its so quiet except the "ssshhhhhhhhhh" of the river. The hum kinda sh'ts on that peace and quiet when its going about 50% of the time.

Yes but I'd need to pull the freezer out to get to the meter but I'm slightly incapacitated at the moment.

Have you got a NAS? One of the drives in mine makes a really deep periodic wooom-wooom-wooom noise that nobody else seems to hear.

No but [b]all the power has been turned off[/b] at the consumer box.

If your powers turned off your freezer will be off. stick your head in the meter cupboard and see if the noise is louder.

Go outside and have a sniff.

Neighbours got "green fingers"?

are you near farmland? From Google maps I think there's a farm - or something - about 100m away from our door but its over the fence, through the river, up a steep bank and beyond which I haven't got round to looking in to. If its not the water pump nearby, I'm guessing they may have a generator.

Can anyone else hear it? Had your blood pressure checked lately?

Yes, on Wednesday.

[i]If your powers turned off your freezer will be off.[/i]

Really? I didn't know that

We had this in our house, noticed it not long after moving in, eventually identified the source as being the electricity meter in the hall. Not noticed it much recently, I've either got used to it or the dog's snoring is drowning it out!

Did it sound like a loud PC fan running The Beard?

Strangely since jimmy's last thread on this topic we also now have The Hum in the flat. Most noticeable late at night on still nights when all is quiet, annoyingly loud when I go to bed. Some nights is does stop, guessing it is a generator somewhere.

I've had this before now and it's turned out to be the local farmers doing farmy stuff in their fields around by us.

Is it continual, only noticeable at certain times of day or fades in & out quite quickly?

Could it be high altitude transatlantic aircraft flying over? I believe they head up your way before turning Statesward.

A neighbour said he had similar and turned out to be his old style (on a new build) gas meter which was replaced and now OK.

Hmm, an old meter can make a noise.

i've had low frequency tinnitus in the past, so bad i was getting out of bed to see why there was a lorry idling outside 😯

found it really really frustrating for a while - do you work in noisy environments (or listen to headphones really loud?)

It's continual, gas meter is outside and newish. I'll have a listen at that but unlikely.

Sound never changes, constant thrum but in a cycle if you know what I mean.

As its constant I'm ruling out planes, trains & automobiles.

[url= http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/midshipman-fish-droning-mating-call-2486013 ]Horny fish?[/url] 😀

As above, give the gas meter a listen, mine was surprisingly loud.

are you on mains water? try turning the mains power off again and then turn off the mains water at the external stop cock

we had a leak at the stopcock that was vibrating the incoming mains cold water pipe and created a noise (that's how we identified the problem as, thankfully, the mains water was undercutting the car park and not the building foundations.)

It took a couple of weeks to identify/rectify and the damage tot eh car park was significant.

I had this in my house. Could only ever hear the humming late at night when it was quiet, or so I thought.

Tracked it down to the "off peak" electricity meter thingumy. It comes on at 11pm and off at 7am (ish), which was why I could not hear it during the day.

Oh, and turning off the power makes no difference - I think the consumer unit is after the meter......(not an electrical expert, so preparing to be flamed...)

I turned off the main switch on the consumer unit then the switch between meter and board. Noise still there.

As its constant I'm ruling out planes, trains & automobiles.

Ship engine? Are you anywhere near the sea? The noise from these can propagate quite far

However, I'd bet it is more likely a noise source that's inside the house. The house's structure will attenuate external noise by a considerable amount. So for an external source to be audible inside, it would likely be pretty loud outside.
I can see there is the potential to have exceptions though, e.g. when outside the problem noise source is masked by other noise sources outside, but once inside the 'masking' sources are attenuated by the building structure but problem source isn't and you hear it. All depends on the frequency spectrum content of the noise sources and if the building has sound insulation weaknesses at a particular frequency

I think it's sinkhole.

Do you have an alarm system? Power being off would take a while to drain from the alarm...

[i]Do you have an alarm system? Power being off would take a while to drain from the alarm[/i]

Ah there's a thought. I'll unplug the battery and try it.