'noisy Fan' Leads To Exhaustive Search

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday November 1, 2008

JUDY Newell just couldn't work it out. She'd had an early morning shower on Tuesday, cleaned her teeth and was feeling pretty good about the world.

As she switched off the bathroom's electric exhaust fan, the blades seemed to stop functioning, but the sound was still there. A constant whirring hum, just like any other small electric motor. She switched it on and off again, still the same result.

She called her husband, Peter, to help investigate this phenomenon, a mistake in itself as his knowledge of anything electrical or mechanical is not exactly of galactic proportions. Thinking it may have been related to a neighbour's pool cleaner, he ventured outside and listened through the bathroom window. Without doubt the noise was coming from the inside ceiling near the exhaust fan.

Nothing else for it, he decided.

"You'll have to call an electrician, love - this can't stay on all day, it's likely to catch fire," he reasoned.

Ever-helpful sparkie George turned up promptly. He was mystified as well. Without warning, he cut the electricity supply at the meter box, in the process causing a computer crash that lost pages of a Clubs NSW report the gentleman of the home had been working on.

The noise continued - despite there now being no electrical supply to the house. Did a model aeroplane descend onto the roof from nearby Keira Oval and was its motor was still running?

Judy and George stood in the bathroom; nothing was happening.

She then looked inside the shower recess. Sitting in a soap holder, propped against the tiled wall, was her battery-powered electric toothbrush - still running from the molar encounter of hours before.

Apparently the near-inaudible noise penetrated the tile, was magnified up an inside copper water pipe, transferred across the ceiling, and exited via the exhaust fan opening. Mystery solved - and at $40 for an electrical call-out, valuable lesson learned - get a toothbrush that relies on elbow grease!

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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