HF Noise - Help with noise and what Im working with

[osros]

Its been a long time out of HF and been tinkering lately dusting off old gear and such. My question is with HF noise levels and what is acceptable or not. Here is where I'm coming from. I setup my HF gear and did not have a proper antenna so I used one that was out of HF band slightly. I was enjoying some signals with a noise floor of about -110db and was doing okay with it, I needed a proper HF antenna so just got and installed a PAR-EWL? ( may got name wrong ) 45 foot wire and got it a few feet outside in a horiz config.

Now my noise floor is at -80/-85db so my noise has increased which got me a bit concerned because alot of the stuff I was getting was on the weak side to begin with. Don't get me wrong it seems to be working ok I still get the strong broadcast stations and what not but unsure if I'm missing.

What I don't get is if I'm doing okay or not at that noise level? of course less is better and I do need to get my antenna higher and further away but have limited options right now. I just have no reference to go by, what are other folks noise levels at, is what I got workable for the DX work or am I wasting time and need to correct this.

I appreciate any help from you HF pros out there.

 

[majoco]

First of all, you might like to tell us what receiver and (out of HF band?) antenna you had which gave you a noise floor of -110dBm and how did you measure it? What time of day? My 10m frequencies have a very low noise but a very low signal as well!
Now that you have a PAR (a few feet?) outside you have a noise floor of -80dBm. What frequency and what sort of noise? You might want to go round your house with a portable and see if the noise is within your property - or just go round turning things off one at a time. Less noise may not be better, you may increase the noise by 10dB and the signal by 20 by tweaking your antenna.
Have you tried all the permutations of the PAR balun and earth connections? Pick on a station that's reasonably strong in the evening in the 30m band and use that as a signal reference - your receiver AGC masks changes in noise level if you don't use a reference - I use the Russian lady on 13125kHz as she's a fairly weak signal. Get your PAR up higher - that may help. Let us know how you get on.