Friday 5 February 2016

Manchester’s Beetham Tower

Manchester’s Beetham Tower

Beetham Tower in Manchester, England, has a reputation for howling, humming and whistling every time the wind picks up.
The skyscraper is irritating residents due to a ghastly howling noise it makes every time the wind blows because of a glass blade built at the top.
As this astonishing new footage (below) shows the £150 million ($226 million) building produces a high-pitched hum which alternately annoys and scares those living in the area.
The video was taken on Sunday, November 29th, when the city faced gale-force winds.
Residents in the city took to Twitter in droves last week to post about the eerie humming coming from the 554-ft building.
The 47-floor structure is one of the thinnest skyscrapers in the world, with a height to width ratio of 12:1 on the east-west facade.
The blade on the south side of the building which is thought to cause the howling during windy weather acts as a façade overrun, accentuating its slim form and it also doubles as a lightning rod.
The hum has been recorded as a B below middle C and gets louder the harder the wind blows.
Engineers have scaled the 47-floor tower to try and carry out repairs and modifications to reduce the din generated by its glass blade, but to no avail.
Work to reduce or eradicate the noise took place in 2007, 2008 and 2010.
Foam pads were installed in 2007, aluminum nosing in 2007 and further work done in February 2010 but attempts to eradicate the noise permanently have been unsuccessful.
In 2012, architect Ian Simpson, who lives in an apartment at the top of the tower, publicly apologized for the noise, which is made by the glass blade built at the top of the building

No comments:

Post a Comment