UKC

When I'm inside my house I can hear this loud irregular droning noise, a bit like the hum of industrial machinery from a distance. I can't hear it outside and it's still there if all the electrics are isolated. It doesn't get louder or quieter as I move around the house. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. I only hear it at home. It started 5 days ago, wasn't here last night but when I came in from work it's there.

It's starting to crack me up and I'm struggling to sleep.

Any ideas? I wondered if it was the wind reverberating off something and my house is acting as some kind of amplifier but I can't think what. Its a semi detached house and the neighbours is an empty holiday cottage but I can't hear anything with my ear against the wall or listening at their door or windows and it's the same in every room of the house.

In reply to Sharp:

Tinnitus ??

In reply to Sharp:

Not being weird here - but could one of your ears be a bit blocked?

I had a similar issue when my right ear was slightly blocked recently.  Rolled over onto my right side while in bed (hence right ear squished to pillow) and I could hear a very odd noise (similar to what you describe) but realised that it was just my body running normally (heart, circulation etc.)  Turned over onto my left - silence...!

In reply to Sharp:

Wasp nest?

In reply to Sharp:

Water hammer ?

Have you an overflow going somewhere and your header tank is constantly topping up?

In reply to jon:

I tried calling the helpline but it wouldn't stop ringing 

In reply to Sharp:

Can you still hear it when you wear headphones / ear defenders?

Do you have a key to next door so you can check there?

Use an upturned glass to listen to walls.

Check incoming water main for vibration.

In reply to Sharp:

The Hum! 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/07/the-hum-...

I hear it now and again at night whereas my partner doesn't, I got my hearing checked for tinnitus but it wasn't that so looks like I'm one of the lucky 3 or 4% who can! 😩

In reply to Sharp:

It's called "The Hum".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-63610977

In reply to Sharp:

Know you've said that you've isolated all electrical devices, but does that include the central heating pump?

In reply to all:

Thanks for the replies. It could perhaps be a blocked ear and tinnitus, I hadn't thought of that. I've had issues with my ear blocking before but when I've had it blocked before it's been more of a constant higher pitched noise and not as loud.

I can still hear it through ear defenders. I'm pretty sure it's nothing related to my heating or water, my heatings all from a log burner and I've heard it when all the pumps are off.

Hopefully it's a blocked ear. The way those articles describe the hum sounds exactly like the noise though.

In reply to Sharp:

Can anyone else hear it?

In reply to Myfyr Tomos:

No, I can't up here in Lancashire

In reply to Sharp:

I hear this too sometimes, exactly as you describe, and as described in those articles. Always at home, at night usually when I'm in bed. I too thought I was cracking up initially, then thought it was tinnitus, and then thought it was something inside the house. It sounds exactly like the hum of distant machinery, like a generator or something outside. My missus can never hear it. When I do hear it, I've tried sticking my head out of the window to see if it's outside (it definitely sounds like it's outside), and it's totally silent outside. Very weird. Doesn't happen often, and mainly in the summer when the windows are open a bit.

In reply to Sharp:

Download a spectrum analyser on your phone, compare inside and outside on the waterfall diagrams and see if it’s in your head (in a very real sense, I am not trying to be dismissive) or not.

I’ve put an example in from my house below.  The low frequency horizontal band (green bar near the bottom of the plot) is my dryer a couple of rooms away and the vertical bits are people talking. 

If you can’t find any evidence of it on the spectrum analyser, it points to tinnitus etc.  

Have you recently used any insecticide or pesticide compounds or otherwise been exposed to toxic nasties?

In reply to petegunn:

That's a good article.

"By resisting definitive scientific explanation and categorisation, the Hum becomes a kind of empty vessel for us to fill with our fears, desires and flights of fancy."

"And when connected with fellow hearers online, there is a sense that they hold a secret, insider knowledge of which the rest of the world is oblivious. It is this feeling of being part of a select, perhaps maligned or misunderstood group, which believes itself to be in possession of a unique truth, that forms the foundations of both conspiracy theories and religious sects."

"For as long as we feel oppressed by a force that seems to defy comprehension, there will be a certain comfort offered by explanations that elevate that suffering to the state of grand narrative."

In reply to Sharp:

Water leak somewhere outside the house - I had one and it drove me insane until Yorkshire Water found it 😖

In reply to wintertree:

That's a great idea, thanks. I live next to a forest and the noise outside was the trees in the wind. I'm wondering if it's worse on windy nights, although it sounds nothing like wind perhaps my ear is distorting it. The pink at the top of the inside is me breifly humming a low frequency.

I can't think of any obvious exposure to anything recently, certainly not pesticides or things like that.

In reply to Sharp:

The inside spectrum at lower frequencies aligns quite well to the wind noise outside.  Be interesting to see both on a windless night.  Maybe keep a diary  of weather conditions when you hear it.  If it is wind noise, silicone rubber earplugs should stop it.

I don’t normally notice the wind noise, but when I go to bed our house is very quiet and it’s quite clear on windy nights.

In reply to Lankyman:

Very witty.🤣

In reply to Sharp:

Anyone near you recently got an air- or ground-sourced heat pump (with associated pump)? Or gone "off grid" with a generator?

It could be flat surfaces (e.g. plasterboard walls?) in your house being driven to resonance by ground-conducted low frequency sound.

In reply to Sharp:

Could be children or pets?

In reply to alx:

More likely to be human as my ex had an absolutely uncanny and annoying habit of droning on about the most trivial of things.

In reply to GEd_83:

I heard a random odd hum in one room of my house when my middle daughter was tiny and rubbish at sleeping through the night.  For ages i thought it was a sleep deprived aural hallucination.

However it actually was real - there was a little access hatch into the eaves of our house in that room and a previous occupier had screwed the transformer for the doorbell to the inner wall behind the hatch - hence the hum appearing to come from the entire wall. 

In reply to Sharp:

I’ve had similar over the years, and discovered one was a neighbours cat deterrent and the other was the thing they keep cement in (building houses nearby). 

Other possibilities - neighbours  central heating? Our central heating sounds louder in some rooms than others (modern house, stud walls causing odd acoustics). 

In reply to Sharp:

It's the 5g nano vaccine 🤣

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

I used to be able to hear old central heating pump (under the floorboards in the back room) from our bedroom, which is upstairs at the front. 

I'm glad to say that one of the (few) benefits of getting older is finally losing the high pitch frequency hearing, so I am no longer bothered by things like cat deterrents.

In reply to john arran:

I found those lines interesting too, but not in a good way: the author seemed to be more interested in the conspiracies himself, hence led into (at that particular point in the article) a rather uncharitable sneering.

Set aside all of that speculation, and what's left is a malaise (or perhaps several different malaises), varying in severity, sometimes causing quite significant symptoms, with no diagnosis and no clear causative agent. Such have always been especially challenging and isolating for their sufferers (I think here of ME/CFS, some of the more atypical autoimmune disorders, and now of course long covid, itself just one of the more extreme possible post-viral ailments).

I'd have liked the author to reflect a little more on the way he shifts between "we/us" and "they", because the slippage between the two masks the lack of empathy that leads him to the right conclusion about the wrong people. Grand narratives about suffering do offer a certain comfort, but not to the sufferers; rather they're a sort of pabulum for everyone else.

In reply to FactorXXX:

When I was working from home during lockdown I was regularly bothered by a constant whining noise. It turned out we had an infestation of teenagers.

In reply to Sharp:

One of the browsers my son uses on my laptop plays a kind of atmospheric background music, but also causes the laptop to hum even when he shut the lid. Took me ages to pinpoint the noise to the laptop and even longer to work out why it was making any noise at all. From then on I always shut it down properly.

In reply to Sharp:

Three most reliable sources of droning-hum in my home (overlooking me as prime suspect) are failing lightbulbs, grotty extractor fans and very nearly closed thermostatic radiator valves. Additionally, my house is draughty so the right wind can set the door gaps and chimneys up humming too. Thinking about it further, I've had the bog do it too when the filler wouldn't shut off fully, I heard it (and all through the house on the pipes) long before eventually spotting the film of water running into the bowl and making the connection. It's disconcerting. A vented attic tank could do the same.

jk

In reply to Sharp:

Just as a note, if you have a muscle spasming near your ear it can cause that. I have had that happen a few times in recent years and it sounds like a lorry is outside my house. At first I thought it was machinery from the industrial estate across the street, but it turns out it was my ear. It is not tinnitus, because my ear is actually hearing this. It was quite debilitating at its peak.

In reply to Sharp:  Had a similar low-frequency noise/hum here last winter.  It was a weird noise as it didn’t seem to come from any particular direction and I had no idea how far away was its origin. 

As I was the only one who could reliably hear it, I began to wonder if it was ‘real’.

Turns out it was a neighbours boiler. 

In reply to all:

Thanks everyone. I've booked an appointment to have my ears looked at so hopefully that will be the issue.