Thread: Have You Heard the Hum?

My house used to have a hum which the wife couldn't hear and it about drove me crazy. Crazy enough that I started logging its occurrence, duration, frequency, and started tracking it down. Thanks to some high end equipment that I borrowed from work I tracked down my hum and the cause of it.
My hum was tracked down to a copper water pipe connected into other copper pipe with a plastic coupler. So I essentially had a large ungrounded joule thief antenna running up a bedroom wall vibrating at a very low frequency. I swapped out the plastic coupler for a copper one and added a ground line to the copper pipe and the hum stopped. Yeah!

Thanks to frequency monitoring I knew the frequency that caused my hum and I used a yaggi antenna to track it down. It was coming from a 15 foot wide directional shortwave radio antenna about 5 miles from my house and pointed directly in line with my house. I talked to the house owner, explained what was going on, and showed him my time logs and he agreed that the times were when he used his shortwave to talk to a friend in Asia. Luckily he was a good guy and went about finding the problem on his end. A week later he called me up and asked me to do a frequency sweep again and the offending frequency was gone. The problem was a bad capacitor in his broadcast amplifier.

So I was nearly driven crazy by a $0.50 part, my wife still thinks I'm crazy, and I should probably be checked for OCD.

Start logging the times when you hear the hum and check your pipes.

Awesome story! Another reason we should be wearing tinfoil hats.

Originally Posted by EMC45

I too have tinnitus. It gets bad if my stress levels go up. If I am pissed and start felling my pulse pound in my neck the noise is real bad. Thankfully that is very rare. Mine came from a mixture of things.... Loud punk shows in tiny crappy little clubs, shooting for years sans ear pro, but mostly I believe it came from working on flightlines while in the employ of my rich uncle. I promise there is nothing like aircraft to destroy your hearing. That and jackhammers, loud 75 KW generators etc. Also I spent a good bit of time working in a machine shop and the noises contained therein also have damaged my hearing. It is a constant high freq buzz. Not chirping, or whistling, just a higher pitched buzz. It accompanies me everywhere I go. I also have bilateral hearing loss that is service connected (according to VA) and they wanted to outfit me with hearing aids. For ten GRAND! I told them to spend the 10K on someone worse off then me. Background noise is what gets me. If someone is droning on and on close by and I am trying to speak to someone else close by it drives me insane.

That's where hearing aids can help you - modern AIDS can be multi programmed so that noise from behind is dimmed and your hearing focussed to the direction you are facing. It really does help in noisy places.

Originally Posted by UKRob

That's where hearing aids can help you - modern AIDS can be multi programmed so that noise from behind is dimmed and your hearing focussed to the direction you are facing. It really does help in noisy places.

Tinnitus also.
I get by most times with a HF in ear amplifier, some band width setting available. Background can be a problem. I lost my hearing in one ear through big bore pistol shooting and machine shop whines. Not at the same time...though... I was tempted by some supervisors.
With my antisocial insecurity check and med ins, I find cheap items can be good enough!
Hmmmm?
~Richard

The street is under construction in front of my house and so therefore it is closed and little traffic and no buses going down the street. Train tracks are 3 blocks away and the light fixtures move as they go by.

As I lay down to sleep last night I noticed how quiet it was until I thought of this thread and I could here what I think is tinnitus but very light. I could hear my heart etc.

Sunday I got my bees delivered and sat after putting them in the hives about 15 yards away Boy what a hum 20,000 plus bees will make.

I had a good talk with my daughter the other night who works at a school for the deaf.

As I write this I can hear the children at the playground across the street at the German Immersion school swear in English.

Random thoughts about how my life may be peaceful but definitely not quiet.....

Story in today's paper about the, "Windsor Hum", many reported that it has been at it's loudest level in 6 years....this poor guy has been recording it, here's the story:

‘It’s past unbelievable’: Residents aggravated by Windsor hum say it’s reached its highest volume in years | National Post

I touched off 5 rounds in the backyard from my KelTec P3AT .380 last night. Let me tell you....Without hearing pro on it is a loud little monster! The hum and whine was pretty pronounced after that. It is gone now.

The condo community I live in is filled with Canadians from the end of October until the middle of April. The last of them went back up North on the 19th ........... and the Hum went with them. Blissful quiet the past couple of days. Of course one probably has nothing to do with the other, but reading about 'The Windsor Hum' has me wondering.

I knew it was the Canadians! I knew it all along! They pretend to be so nice…and then! POW! You have a hum! LOL

Now if Jimmy can figure out who we can blame the tinnitus on, other than ourselves.

Originally Posted by jmercer

Thank you for serving Wullie.

I hear ya! Har!! I did some hot refueling on A-6's. Lost a lot of it there. *Mouse ears and ear plugs didn't stop it.

For me (USMC 67-71, RVN 69-70) only if the loss goes down into voice range. No help for any loss above voice range or tinnitus.

WELCOME HOME Marine!!!

Got to love an A-6. I was CAG arming on the USS AMERICA, RVN '72-73Worked the port side of the port bow cat. Had A-6's, A-7's mostly on my cat, Had F-4's and A-5's coming off the waist cats right behind me. Radio headset wasn't as good as the regular Dave Clarks. Damn A-6's were the loudest things on the boat. Another thing that got me was "Heavy 2's" SAR CH-47. They parked on the "shelf" which was right above our shop. I went out to do maintenance on a bird and those clowns decided to have a mad minute with everything that bird had for guns. Two Ma dueces, a -60 and minigun all went off at once about 10' over my head. As it wasn't flight quarters, I didn't have any hearing protection. I didn't hear anything for several hours after that. They apologized after I dog cussed 'em for a while, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. LOL

You're right about no help for the high frequency loss or tinnitus, but the aids do amplify what little I've got left. It helps me understand what my says (when I wear 'em LOL)