My Story

I have lived in Alberta since 1989 and I was not affected by Pipeline Compressors or the Hum until December of 2019. The area where we live in central Alberta is in the heart of pipeline country and we are surrounded by pipeline compressors and facilties.

Over the almost two decades we have lived in this particular area we have at times been bothered by cooling fans on portable compressors and by well operators leaving doors open in hot weather to accomodate poorly designed equipment. For the most part we haven't bothered to take the people responsible to task frankly because they are ignorant and unless it is something that is really bothersome it just is not worth the effort.

In our particular area the gas field is at the end of life and things are wrapping up. There are many wellsites that are serviced by portable compressors designed to be in service for an indeterminate period of time. What it amounts to is it simply isn't financially viable to install permanant facilities as the wells may stop producing. As a result the Pipeline system for gathering natural gas is at times cobbled together with available equipment to reduce costs. As wells stop producing these portable compressors are moved around to better accomodate what it happening at a particular period in time. It was after a rearrangment of equipment locally that my nightmare with natural gas pipeline compressors began.

It all started when I noticed that a portable compressor that had been located just north of our Home was being moved. By all acounts we were pleased as we had lived with the sound of the cooling fan in our yard for years and despite mentioning it many times to the people responsible. Thinking that we had endured the worst we knew that we would not miss the incessant howl of the fan when we were outside in our yard. Little did we know that this portable compressor was being moved to a new location to the south east of our home where the cooling fan is still clearly audible at times to this day.

Not long after this portable compressor was moved I began to notice and sound like a diesel engine running in the distance. I could hear it throughout our house and in every building on our property almost all of the time. It would seem to diminish around the end of the work day and return between 11 pm and about 4 am with a vengance. Although my wife didnt hear it as much and wasn't particularly bothered by it the inccessant Hum made it impossible to fall asleep. It was a sound that penetrated the walls of our house and made every cell in my body vibrate. I tried to drown it out with the TV and Stereo and it did not work. I tried every type of earplug available to fall asleep at night and nothing would stop the sound from coming through. That's when I began to look for the source of the noise and after five years of sleepless nights and relentlessly investigation I have arrived at the conclusion that the only possible source of "The Hum" that affects me where I live is natural gas pipeline compressors and infrastructure. After having studied many similar cases of the Hum around the world I would have to conclude that it is most certainly something that people are experiencing and enduring elsewhere.

For more on the Hum please visit my other Sites

www.therealworldhum.com
and
www.therealworldhum.ca