[slow_down]

I moved into a vintage apartment earlier this year.  The building was built in 1912 and went through a gut rehab in 1998 - have no real specifics at hand on the electrical history.  Anyway, over the past few months, I've started to notice an annoying electrical buzz/hum in my living room.  It's there much but not all of the time, and varies in volume too.  Sometimes it's silent, other times it is present but so quiet I can barely hear it over all the competing buzzes in the living room (like my incredibly noisy comcast hd dvr box - hate it!), but some of the time it sounds like I've got two or three microwaves running simultaneously!  I've tried unplugging everything in the room and that doesn't change anything.  I can place the general area of the sound near one front facing wall, but can't pinpoint it any further.  Any thoughts on what's going on and things I could try to improve my situation?

[honesthoff]

Is this an elevator building?

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Nope.  Top floor of a 3 story walkup.  For awhile I thought maybe the sound was coming from the window ac unit of a neighbor below, but now that the weather's finally changed, I can confirm that it isn't.

[honesthoff]

I do a lot of rehab/re-fit on  old buildings here in Philadelphia, and I live in a hundred-year-old building myself.  A lot of the humming I get comes from transformers for various equipment (elevators, condensate pumps, domestic and fire water pumps, AHU's, etc.).  It is usually cost prohibitive for an owner to change from an older 240v 2-phase five wire service to modern (and more economical) 3-phase service.  Hence most of today's modern equipment will require a transformer.  Most are obscenely loud no matter where they are located.  I hear the transformer from the elevator headhouse in my apartment at all times.  Of course it may just be something as simple as a faulty ballast on a fluorescent lamp.

[slow_down]

Sounds like there's likely not much I can do about this problem.  Oh well, on the bright side I don't really notice it when I have music or the TV BLASTING!   Still though, I'd love to just know where the buzz is coming from.

[Bob in St. Louis]

If you have access to the circuit breaker box to YOUR specific unit , you could cut the power and see if the buzz goes away. If it's still there, you're pretty well screwed. (IMHO)

Bob

[slow_down]

If you have access to the circuit breaker box to YOUR specific unit , you could cut the power and see if the buzz goes away. If it's still there, you're pretty well screwed. (IMHO)

Bob

I'm screwed, pretty well.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Well..... the only solution I see is to turn the volume up a wee bit more. 

Bob

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Update on this - turns out it is the ceiling fan from my neighbor below.  Now I need to figure out if it is a bad fan, bad installation, or bad construction.  I have to think there are some easy fixes that will at least improve the situation without spending a lot of dough.  Any ideas?

[Russell Dawkins]

I would say the most promising solution would be to explain the situation to the downstairs tenants and offfer to buy them a nice floor standing fan in replacement. You could try vibration-isolating the ceiling fan but I imagine it would still be audible no matter what was done, especially on reduced rpm settings, and would be a waste of time. You could ask if they could use it full speed or not at all, but that's not a certain thing, either.

The buzz most likely is the reaction of the motor to the chopped up power that is fed to it when reduced rpm settings are used.

Good luck. This would drive me out of the place!

[slow_down]

I would say the most promising solution would be to explain the situation to the downstairs tenants and offfer to buy them a nice floor standing fan in replacement. You could try vibration-isolating the ceiling fan but I imagine it would still be audible no matter what was done, especially on reduced rpm settings, and would be a waste of time. You could ask if they could use it full speed or not at all, but that's not a certain thing, either.

The buzz most likely is the reaction of the motor to the chopped up power that is fed to it when reduced rpm settings are used.

Good luck. This would drive me out of the place!

Thanks for the input.  A floorstanding fan is really really far from a substitute for a ceiling fan, and I think there are other options I'd try first.  Also, it's a condo (and one I'm pretty happy with overall) so moving out anytime soon ain't an option 

Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but I'm thinking there could be all sorts of fixable reasons for this buzzing.  The fan might be malfunctioning, for one, and replacing/fixing it might solve the problem entirely!  Or it may just be a cheaper fan with shoddy assembly, and replacement and/or modified installation could help there too.  Rubber gaskets and/or some kind of sound isolating fastener like an RC-1 clip could possibly reduce the sound travel to a negligable level.  This is just speculation, of course, but all I know is that there are lots of ceiling fans out there and they're not all this noisy, so there have got to be ways to improve the situation.

Also, I'm pretty sure she is using it at full speed, or at least the second fastest speed.

[Bob in St. Louis]

So, HOW in the world did you find out the fan was the cause? 

Bob

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So, HOW in the world did you find out the fan was the cause? 

Bob

Well cutting off the power confirmed that none of my wiring was to blame, I live in a top floor apartment and know there's nothing on my roof, and the three linear feet of shared walls on my level are far from the noise so that left no direction but down.  I finally bit the bullet and asked my downstairs neighbor about it and after a couple minutes brainstorming, we figured out it was her ceiling fan.  So now all that's left is to solve the problem!

[Bob in St. Louis]

Cool, please keep us updated.

Bob

[honesthoff]

That's some good detective work, Columbo!  I think Hunter makes some whisper quiet fans.

[slow_down]

I think Hunter makes some whisper quiet fans.

ah, but who pays for the new fan?  that's where it starts getting awkward!

[Bob in St. Louis]

If the existing fan is quiet from the condo below, it may not be a "noise" issue at all. Hence, replacing the fan wouldn't change anything. How about isolating the current unit? It'd be cheaper and easier than an entire new jobbie.

Bob