Every house has its creeky sounds. Some are easily identifiable, some not so much. The longer you live in a place, the better you are at knowing what’s normal (like the furnace or the water pump or the squirrel family in the attic) and what could signal a problem (like a window-shattering kaboom!!!) And of course, the sounds are magnified if you’re home alone on a stormy night when the power goes out… or when it’s something particularly expensive… :eek: :eek: :eek:
The house we’re in now has its own quirky noises - the furnace, the water tank pump, and a dehumidifier all live under my side of the bed, or it seems like it. Most of the time, I don’t notice them, but sometimes, it’s a cacophony of torture. Still, I know what the sounds are and I can deal.
When we lived in FL the last time, I was at home, minding my own business, when all of a sudden there was a crashing noise that shook the house and scared the bedoobies outta me! Apparently, when building the houses in our cul-de-sac, the builders tried to save a large tree between our house an our neighbor. But the repeated driving over its roots, plus damage that must have occurred when our foundation was dug, killed the tree within a month of us moving in. As a farewell tribute, it dropped a huge branch that clipped the corner of the garage roof before crashing to the ground. Another foot to the right, and it would have missed us. Instead, our housewarming was an insurance deductible, because the builder refused to acknowledge his part in the episode.
In our house now, my biggest fear is of water noise - specifically water gushing out of the aquarium. So far, so good…
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Time for a real post now. I’m up and caffienatin’. YAWN 'Tis 47 degrees Amurrkin out with a predicted high of 79. A beautiful day that I must spend at irk, alas.
The weirdest noise in da cave is the exhaust fan in the attic. It kicks in when the temp up there reaches ninety degrees which does not take a lot to do in these parts. Anywho, when nuttin’, i.e. ceilin’ fans, ac/heat is runnin’, like now, I hear it when it kicks on. Matter of fact it just stopped runnin’ as I post. The other fun noise is the awnin’ over the back porch. It contracts and expands with poppin’ noises that can be right disturbin’ when da cave is quiet.
Now I must seek out more caffiene and brekkie for rumbly tummy. Then, alas, irk purtification must commence.
Thanks for the cool OP and starting off our weekly MMP, Mooooom!
Here’s my “strange noises in the house” story. I live in a little cottage. There’s a couple of trees outside and a similar abandoned cottage next door. When I moved in, the landlord said the previous tennant moved out because she thought the place had mice.
Well, a few days later, I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet on my roof. I did a “WTF?” and then ran outside where I saw a squirrel merrily scampering from my roof to the roof next door and then up a tree. I laughed so hard I almost fell over.
Now when I hear those feet on my roof, I imagine those squirrels gathering up nuts for the winter.
My house says “the original owner only thought he knew what he was doing… heh heh heh. Surprise!”
Actually, the only noise that angers me is the air bubbles in the heating system causing periodic clanking just as I’m falling asleep. Most of the other noises are cat-generated.
**rosie **- do you have the old-time hot water radiators? Those are really easy to bleed to eliminate noises and increase heating efficiency. In fact, I would expect any hot water system would be fairly routine to bleed. Heck, I figured mine out with a book, and that one little event taught me tons about the heat in my first house. It might be worth investigating.
Fortunately, we don’t have too many cat noises in the night, since the noisy cat likes to plaster himself against me and absorb all my body heat as I sleep. The wussy cat is pretty quiet.
swampy, we have an attic fan also, but it’s at the end of the house over the garage, so it can’t be heard in the living spaces. I don’t know what temp it’s set to, but it rarely shuts off in the summer.
My house barely talks, specially now that I’ve had the electrical system renewed. My radiators use hot water, but they don’t make any noise. Attempts to bleed them (which I’m used to doing because Mom’s radiators must be bled daily) just result in water coming out real fast. The old lamps in the hallway made a buzzing noise which I didn’t like; I didn’t know exactly what caused them, but I was sure it wasn’t normal.
The general contractors I called to ask for budgets to replace the electrical system, redo the kitchen and do some painting poopoh’ed the noise; “bah, it’s not important, we can leave those in place”. I pointed out I wanted to change the lamps because I knew they were recovered from another house, and I could see that some of them had superficial damage. That’s one of the many examples of “not being willing to do what the paying party wants done” which led to neither of them getting the contract.
The electrician I ended up hiring heard that buzz and went “damn, I’d thought maybe we could save those but we can’t, that’s the transformers”. New lamps, no buzzy hallway, yeeeeeeey!
The studio I’m renting in Madriz (capital of De Espains), though, does talk. The electric meter goes ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky all the time, which means it’s there. I have to start using the heaters now (they’re what I think of as “british style”, electrical and set to charge up during the night to take advantage of cheaper rates) but since I haven’t, I don’t know whether they make noise.
It’s almost 5 in the morning here. And I’ve been up for two hours already! I do this every year at this time. I get into a cycle where I can not sleep beyond 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, which means I’m going to sleep in my chair at 7:00 or 8:00 at night. Grrr.
Today could tell us whether we are going to be opening a deli or not, so I’m on pins and needles.
My cat Max does not make a lot of noise in the night during his sneaky little forays, but he is stealing all of the tealight candles from my holder that sits on the coffee table and hiding them. I’m not sure, but I think he is planning a romantic rendezvous.
hah, I didn’t think about that! No, he has left the matches alone so far. I’m only concerned because Maddie is his sister, not his girlfriend, and I’m not sure he knows that. He is fixed though. I’m not sure he knows that either. :0)
Jeez, WalMart gets it’s knickers in a bunch if you bring your dog inside. Then just watches you walk around shopping. Y’know, I was never one of those ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ people until I learned how much fun it was to have little kids go crazy 'cause my pup was in the store.
I used to have an apartment with radiators. I can’t remember if they were hot water or steam, but on those odd mornings when the super was cold, they’d light the boiler and I’d wake up to horrific pounding as the whole system would be air-locked or whatever because they wouldn’t let the system just stay on in the winter.
I just looked around the room and realized how many pieces of paper I have with the Borg Queen Spine on them. I know it’s not really the Borg Queen, but the logo for my neurosurgeon’s practice reminds me of it.
For as much money as my insurance company is about to give them, I hope I can at least get a Christmas card out of them.
Our house now is quiet, but at the last apartment, the blower for the furnace/AC was right next to the bedroom. This is a bad arrangement for a light sleeper. It was awful. We ended up just turning it to on (instead of auto, which kicks on when the heat or AC turns on) overnight because a constant, if loud, noise could be tuned out much better than the jarring sound of it turning on and then off. That apartment was great except for that one issue.
The farm that brings meat to the farmers’ market had fresh duck this week so I snagged one immediately. KT roasted it last night and made duck mashed potatoes (potatoes mashed with duck fat instead of butter). Wow was that all good. Now we’ve got leftover duck to do something with later this week. It’s fun finding unexpected types of meat at the market. We got rabbit from the same farm early in the summer. And they have the best bacon that either of us has ever had.
