Electrical hum - the saga continues
So the previous thread was closed, but this issue lives.
To recap – my tenants have been hearing an electrical hum and vibration in the garden level apt, coming from the party wall. At its most intense, it kind of feels like your entering a force field is the best way I can explain it. Its not decibel loud – but super noticeable. It’s on and off all day, but most intense and most persistent at night. To try and identify the cause I’ve: killed electric mains, flipped the emergency gas shut offs, ensure all HVAC was turned off. Still heard it with all that off. I cut a hole in the drywall where the sound/vibration was strongest, and got a listening device. Wasn’t really able to determine anything. Called DEP and had them check water pressure – it was normal.
Got into the neighbor’s apt on the opposite side – he has a fridge on wall near the sound. It was running, but wasn’t particularly louder than a normal fridge running. He pulled it out a couple inches – nothing changed. I got in touch with the landlord of the building (he doesn’t live there) – and he came by. We went in the basement. I heard a loud sound there – but we weren’t able to identify what it was – but it sounded like a generator. No sump pump or generator in the building. He said he would put the fridge on pads to try and help – but didn’t really want to or know to address the sound we heard in the basement.
Today, my tenant pointed out that there is a ConEd underground transformer vault on the same side of the street, three houses down. When you stand over the grate – you can hear a pretty loud buzz. I tried to find some other ones in the neighborhood, and they didn’t seem to be buzzing. I’ve asked ConEd to come check ASAP.
Any thoughts or advice on next steps? Or who
I could bring in to try and help? Every electrician I spoke to has no idea and said if mains are off, it can’t be electric in the house. Could it be the ConEd transformer vault causing this? The whole experience has been incredibly stressful for me as a newish landlord and has been making my tenant insane.
Thank you all!
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
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stevecym | 4 years and 6 months ago
Urbandad: even though i mention it is illegal, i almost closed with”this is why we call licensed trades to do this kind of work”.
Most people on here dont know why they should not do things and even some of those do it and mean to correct it and years later things are still the same.
No one on here can teach every one everything they should not do, especially with electric, heating, and in the wall plumbing. With those we a should say to call a licensed trades to reunforce that we shoud not even be thinking it.
hkapstein | 4 years and 6 months ago
Don’t return your current to the panel neutral via the ground, there’s so many reasons to to do it. No one who understood why it isn’t allowed would want to do that in their own home.
stevecym | 4 years and 6 months ago
Bklynrefugee: that is called a “bronx neutral”. I suppose there could be other reasons why someone would do this, but one reason is if they want an outlet and do not want to run a curcuit, the will pull a hot off the hot side of a switch (say to a cieling lamp) and then run the neutral back through the ground. I only know this as i thought about doing it in my house and when i check the legality of it on line, i also learned the name of it and that it is illegal.
colonialrevival | 4 years and 6 months ago
Glad to hear that you’ve found the source.
stevecym | 4 years and 6 months ago
if any of this is what dork is suggesting, it would be wise to find it. arcs cause fires. broken and loose wires cause fires. they make breakers now that detect arcs and shut off (sometimes our tools trip those breakers).
BklnRefugee | 4 years and 6 months ago
So here’s my theory, more fleshed out. Your neighbor’s outlet, the one that refrigerator is plugged into, has the neutral and ground tied together. When there is a load on that outlet, there will be parallel paths to ground (current returning on both neutral and ground wires) in unbalanced fashion. That is going to create the magnetic field you are picking up. That magnetic field could, I suppose, be causing some metal to vibrate.
dorkofwindsor | 4 years and 6 months ago
Also possible that there is a loose wire in the neighbors outlet box creating arcs.
Once I encountered a loose ground wire on my sub panel that made a hum behind the panel door. When I opened up the panel it was arcing and creating the sound almost like the FX overdubs you hear in movies. It occurred randomly and sporadically, although you can hear these things better at night. Cranked the ground wire down and it was all gone.
I am not certain this sound would travel well through a double brick party wall, although you usually only encounter these odd things once. good luck!
BklnRefugee | 4 years and 6 months ago
I suspect that the compressor in the refrigerator, when running, would create EMF. Possible that is what you are detecting. Alternatively, neutral-to-ground connectivity in a outlet somewhere in that wall?
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
There is a hose spigot – but it’s definitely fully shut. I’m thinking more and more that maybe it’s not the fridge in the neighbor’s apt, but the outlet it’s plugged into.
I got an EMF meter. And when there’s no hum, I don’t pick up anything. But when the hum comes on, I’m picking up 33 mG exactly where the outlet is on the other side of the wall. I don’t know enough about electric wiring to fully know what that means though. Anyone have any insight?
Archiefina | 4 years and 6 months ago
I can completely sympathize, so here’s a hail mary: years ago, in our ground floor brownstone apartment, we were driven crazy by a sudden persistent very loud hum. For days I searched in front, in back, across and down our street AND the street behind our street, to no avail. Finally, we figured out it was the outdoor, ground level water spigot which wasn’t fully shut, and hadn’t been for months – no water was coming out, but air was suddenly reverberating through it. The noise was a loud hum that sounded like it was coming out of the ground. Could it be something non-electrical like that?
greenworks | 4 years and 6 months ago
Years and years ago, I lived across from a substation of some sort in Brooklyn heights can’t remember if it was coned or transit – and we’d get an assortment of weird hums and noises. My money is on cate’s theory. Her raising it reminded me of the weird sounds emanating from it. Forgive me, it was the 1990’s lol.
Sound moves in mysterious ways, so it’s entirely plausible that one neighbor could be hearing it but not another.
Refrigerator next door logically seems improbable to me.
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Hi Cate – yes, that’s my prime suspect at the moment. I’m still waiting for them to check it – last I checked my ticket number, they’ve not yet assigned a crew to it.
cate | 4 years and 6 months ago
Maybe something new and bad is going on with the Con Ed substation. Since you can feel it/hear it in the apartment, complain to ConEd about the substation and have them in to feel for themselves.
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Closest subway is a solid 10 min walk away. And the hum is a relatively new phenomenon, so I don’t think it’s that.
Lurker | 4 years and 6 months ago
You seem to have exhausted all sources, but just to say houses are like giant speaker boxes and all of them have a unique frequency that they respond to. So like a car driving down the street may cause your windows to vibrate or the stairs or a particular closet, but not your neighbors or even other parts of your house. It definitely could be something like that Con Ed substation for sure and calling them actually works as they are required to address noise complaints from equipment (a friend had them come measure a high whining noise from a substation near his apt). –
Any chance a subway tunnel or line is near by ? We have an outdoor subway line 3 blocks away and someone who slept in our basement swears he could feel it–on concrete floors in an insulated and soundproofed apt.
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Hi Urbandad,
Not fully eliminated – but it seems unlikely that it would cause this much disturbance. Nothing audible on neighbor’s side apt (but again, a very loud basement). No sound in the yard. No power lines in the yard either – only optimum cables. My basement is dead silent. But I’m thinking that’s because the foundational walls are better sound insulators than brick+drywall.
The issue is in the garden level, back of the house, on the left party wall if you’re facing the back of the house.
hkapstein | 4 years and 6 months ago
Have you fully eliminated the fridge as the source? The compressor can vibrate the floors unders certain circumstances, and that could perhaps lead to your issue, though I’ve never see that before, and many have fridges on that wall. Is the buzzing audible on his side? Why does his tenant not hear it? Next check the yard. Are there any power lines back there? I doubt a transformer in the street would cause a buzzing in the wall unless you can pinpoint a connection somehow. Now in your basement, is there any sound? Where in the house is the room with this issue? Obviously the sound has a source, and your exploration has not yet discovered it, or has overlooked it, but it should be possible to at least explain it.
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Forgot to mention – also disconnected Optimum line into the house in case it was causing some kind interference. Nothing there either.