Noisy Street Lights

I'm sure somebody here will know the answer to this right away. I just moved to a new apartment, and there is an overhead street light right in front of my building by the curb. It's probably about 30 feet from my front window. It's one of those uber bright things. Anyway, the damn thing buzzes so loud I can hear in my living room, and it's annoying. It sounds like a real bad transformer going out. I've seen it flicker on/off at night. I'm hoping that it's dying and I can have the city replace it so I don't have the noise. I hope it doesn't sound like that normally. Does this make any sense to anyone? What's going on here? Thanks....

I'm sure everyone here has heard that noise. There's always one that's noisier than all the rest. I'm sometimes temped to shoot it out (of frustration).

Are you saying it's normal, not a sign the thing need replacement?

If that's a city street light; there could be a phone number or website where you could contact the city to report broken street lights.

I've heard HID ballast before but they shouldn't be loud enough that you could hear it from inside your house. There's a strip mall nearby I know of with an alley behind the building which is lit by some HID Sodium floodlights; one of the floodlights in the middle of the alley makes a "DEEENNNNN" so loud that you could hear it from 80 feet away

I just recently contacted our electric company, SCE (Southern California Electric Co) by email about our street light flickering.

The informatiom they wanted was the street pole number. What 2 addresses the pole is located. Mine was located between our house and my neighbors.

It took about a month to have the light fixed.

You can contact the power/light company to have the light fixed, but you'll wait months... or you could solve the problem with a concentrated application of kinetic energy, and not wait at all.

Fallingwater said:

You can contact the power/light company to have the light fixed, but you'll wait months... or you could solve the problem with a concentrated application of kinetic energy, and not wait at all.

Click to expand...

LOL

When I was in college, I had a room in the back of a house with a parking lot behind it. One day, they installed a mercury vapor light. It was at the exact height of my window, and only about 12 feet away.

It buzzed horribly, and was so bright, even with an extra sets of curtains, I could read by it's light.

It lasted 3 days, and was promptly replaced. (Within 24 hours; private parking lot, not municipal).

This happened every 3-4 days for a quite awhile. One day, I got a call, asking, in an accusatory manner, just what did I know about the light that kept getting broken.

"They only seem to last about 3 or 4 days. Probably inferior glass in the bulb. The parking lot is really dark and dangerous without the light."

Eventually, they went back to the incandescent fixture, which did not bother me at all.

I suspect the powers of entropy were being manifested.