Am trying to determine the source of a low level, low pitched "rumbling" noise that appears to only be heard inside houses in our road, any thoughts? I live in the Olton area within the UK. The noise can be briefly intermittent or continuous for hours and can only be heard indoors - louder at night. One neighbour has reported that his pillow vibrates at night. The local water authority have said that the noise is nothing to do with them, even though their sewers run through pipes that run under ground along the road and that they have storm tanks within the area. WE do have HS2 boring tunnels about 10 mile away, could this be the cause ?
 A: Arthur,
High frequency sound get absorbed more quickly in dense material than low frequency sound.  The fact that the noise is low frequency and can only be heard indoors suggest that it's travelled some distance underground.
However the distance could be small e.g. 10m or many km if the source is loud enough.
You've asked on a physics website, so it's best to test different theories with experiment.
The theory that it's HS2 tunnelling noise travelling along pipes is best tested like this - Try and get a record of tunnelling times from HS2 (e.g. for a particular few days) and see if it matches what you hear.
If it is the above, it seems unlikely that tunnelling so far away would always effect you, i.e. the source of the sound moves as the tunnelling progresses, presumably it wouldn't be near enough to the pipes that had a route under your house before long, in which case it'll cease to be a problem.
It's quite likely to be more local.
Here is the website for Coventry Environmental Health, they have a 'report a noise problem' link Environmental Health, although you might need the Birmingham one.
Best of luck with it.
