The last couple of nights I’ve felt like the outside noise was really loud, which I thought was weird, because I haven’t noticed anything up until now. When I first moved in, I was actually struck by how very quiet it was – compared to my apartment, which was right next to a busy intersection that seemed to attract cavalcades of motorcycles. UGH. The noise I was hearing sounded – to me – like helicopters were flying directly over the house. “Why am I suddenly in their flight path?” I wondered. “Is there some kind of army training base nearby that’s running some kind of late night/early morning ops?”
Then I thought, well, maybe there’s just a lot of traffic all of a sudden – because the weather finally decided to get nice and people want to be OUT instead of hibernating inside their houses. And what I’m hearing is probably road noise, which is louder right now because there’s no foliage on the trees to insulate us from the noise pollution. Reasonable, right?
I got home from work today and heard the noise again – combined with the refrigerator running things were starting to sound a little cacophonous – and realized it was coming from the attic. Oh. It’s the ventilation fan. So, that’s good, because I can go up there and figure out why it’s running. Cue the dragging of the ladder from the garage into the house. Not sure where my headlamp is at the moment (in a safe place, obvs), so I grabbed my flashlight and climbed into the hatch. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the attic fan prior to this. The inspector told me it was broken, my electrician went up there and said it was jammed – then unjammed it – and reset it so it would work, and I think it ran a few times before it got too cold and then I didn’t hear it all winter. The warmest it’s been this week was 60 degrees, though. I don’t *think* that that should heat my attic up past 120, which is what I thought the electrician said he’d set the temperature at. It was, indeed, running, when I inspected it. And after multiple repositionings of me across the rafters, I got a look at its electrical bits. The cover for the box had a hole in it through which a knob was supposed to protrude. It was askew, so I had to take it off. The temp seemed to be set at 90 (still didn’t feel that warm to me up there), so I turned the knob up a bit. The fan switched off, and it was immediately much less noisy in my house. So, that’s good. I’m still not sure the thermostat is sensing correctly, so I guess my next step is to get a thermometer up there, so I can tell how warm it *really* is and whether I need to adjust accordingly.
Next time I head up into the attic, I will remember to change out of anything fleecy, because holy crap, I have a ton of insulation stuck to my pants right now. #feelingbothhandyandincrediblyattractive
You know what Red Green says, “If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.” Probably I need to lay in a supply of duct tape to realize my dreams of becoming Just Like Him.
kaysootee 