Strange electrical-sounding whine - diagnosis?

D

Dreamerb

Registered User
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We have a mystery.

We've been doing a full renovation of our house in the last few months, including re-wiring, re-plumbing, new windows, floors, doors, central heating, etc.

Our living room has developed an unpleasant high pitched whine in the last two to four weeks - it's definitely a new thing. It sounds like continuous electrical feedback with no white noise (or maybe some other sort of resonance). The room is still unoccupied since it's not yet finished, so there are no appliances plugged in or operating. The noise is there whether the light is on or not. We tried switching off mains power, and the noise was still there. We visited our adjoining neighbours to see if it was something they had changed in their house; it wasn't.

We have removed a back boiler from the chimney, but it doesn't seem to be noise penetrating from outside. The other "new" things to the room are a change to the NTL wiring (now comes down behind insulated plasterboard), new phone socket (also behind plasterboard), and a new radiator (but no water in the system yet and sounds too high-pitched and consistent to be air moving through the pipes).

The noise also seems to be confined to that room - nothing like it in the adjacent rooms or the bedroom above.

We're stumped, our builder is stumped, our plumber is stumped and our electrician is unhelpful.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what it could be?
 
I would lay odds its something next door.

Other possibility is something that runs on a battery. Wirefree phone, alarm backup etc.
 
I was thinking maybe light transformer but not if power is off. Do you or your neighbour have those insect repellant transmitters. They have a high pitch sound and have a back up battery.
 
How many people can hear it? Is it everyone, or just a few? If just a few, it could be one of those high frequency pest repellents.
 
No phone in room yet, alarm not installed. We've lived in the house for nearly two years, and this noise is definitely new in the last four weeks. We sat in the corresponding room next door for half an hour having a chat with the neighbours, and you can't hear it there and they haven't changed anything lately.

It's very strange - and a pretty unpleasant sound too :(.
 
Seagull said:
How many people can hear it? Is it everyone, or just a few? If just a few, it could be one of those high frequency pest repellents.
Click to expand...

Everyone, apart from one contractor who has hearing damage. Good thought, but I can't quite hear those pest repellents either!
 
it might be worth having a read through this even if it is a bit long. it's intresting that you both had the same sort of work done to your houses even if this one is in the u.k. [broken link removed]
 
Thanks to all for the suggestions. We have now solved the mystery. aircobra19 was closest.

It turns out that when you have a battery powered radio controlled weather station thingy* (the thermometer/barometer job with a wireless external sensor as well) sitting in a box out of sight in a stack of things on your dust-sheeted table, and the batteries run low - or just because it's feeling depressed or neglected - it starts to emit a high pitched whine.

One new set of batteries later, weather station's working and we're no longer afraid we'll have to write off a room of our newly refurbished house to avoid long term hearing and sanity damage.

Only problem now is how to tell our builder without causing waves of derisive laughter. :eek:

* technical term
 
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