There's a loud humming noise - a bit higher frequency than mains hum - coming from the water main pipe (the one with the stop tap) and reverberating through the house.
It started in the early hours all on its own. No water was running at the time.
I haven't touched the plumbing, honestly! No work has been done on it in more than a year so there's no obvious cause.
All the taps - kitchen, bath and basin - are vibrating in harmony. If I run water - either hot or cold - it doesn't stop. I hoped it might. :(
The stop tap is dodgy - I can't turn it right off, as discovered when trying to fitting an outside tap (improvisation saved the day then). But turning it _down_ doesn't seem to quiet it any. I hoped that might work too.
I'm unlikely to get any sleep tonight. Any moonlighting plumbers care to advise?
It's getting louder. I've followed the pipes all around the house; it's worst in the concealed part between the landing floor and the kitchen ceiling.
The mains pipe travels through the hall, up under the stairs, up the landing wall into the loft and then down into the bathroom and loo. They descend into the kitchen so I guess they come down from the bathroom.
It's a continuous unvarying tone; I've flushed the loo [no, the ball valve is fine], run taps [they all work ok, no drips/leaks anywhere], even turned the washer and dishwasher on and off and nothing seems to make any difference.
I'll try to get some rest, but it sounds horribly like someone's using a power sander in the next room. :(
Pull the main power isolator on your consumer unit. Does the noise stop? If so, you've got some malfunctioning electrical equipment or wiring somewhere.
sounds like you need to 'shock' it out of the system by turning on all of the taps full blast including any appliances for a few minutes and the one by one turning them off. the sudden change in flow through the pipes is usually enough to stop the vicious circle of water hammer. failing that id speak to your neighbour and get them to do the same thing.
This morning it's intermittent. Turning on the taps shuts it up for a while. Sometimes the pitch varies, but it hasn't managed a tune yet. ;)
when nobody was using water?
My plumbing is just regular, old-fashioned house plumbing; no pumps anywhere.
Now what do I do?
Glad you can do something about yours! But please don't get me started on heating. There's a job I have to do on it but I got distracted when I was told about it and now I've forgotten. The person who told me isn't coming back. I daresay I'll be posting about it before too long. :(
It's definitely hydraulic, not electrical. Somewhat better today in that it's intermittent, but I've no idea why it happened. For once, it wasn't anything I did.
OK, cool. That sounds like a fix I can live with. Off to do it now. :)
At first I thought it was them hoovering! But they don't get up till 5 am. I'll do that if necessary; I live in a semi so it's likely our water supplies are linked.
np. the problem is unlikely to go away until the source of the initial jolt that starts the hammering is found and fixed. i have the same prob in my house...when i use the hot water the cold water tank in the lofts' ballvalve which is circa 15 years old closes suddenly and causes the jolt that start the water hammer. it last about 10 mins and dies away naturally unless i run the cold water tap and flush the loo to stop it first. its not bad enough to fix just yet, but when i next do some plumbing work i will fit a new one to solve the prob. it sounds like its your neighbour that has the water hammer problem, might be worth having a chat if it becomes more of a nuisance.
Bugger, I'll have to shut my computers down to find out.
OK, turning off the water at the stop-tap didn't shut it up. I removed the pipe boxing from around it hoping there'd be something obvious but there wasn't. I ran all the taps till the flow stopped [near as dammit, the stop-tap's duff]. Still making a din, which didn't alter when I turned it back on. If I could figure out why it suddenly started I'd be happier. Ain't life like that?
So now, time to shutdown the computers. :( Will report back.
No, that didn't do anything either. Except set off the burglar alarm; that was fun.
BTW the incoming main is on the opposite side to the neighbours', on the outside edge of the pair of houses. They're out anyway, but I doubt it has anything to do with them. You can't hear it much on 'their' side of the house, where there's no water pipes.
Any more ideas? Please? I can't afford to call anyone out, even if they're working atm, which is unlikely. I'm thinking I might have to start ripping up the landing carpet and floorboards. I don't fancy doing that much.
Could be a leak before the stop tap. I had a leak in the underground main about 6m before the pipe enters the house, and you could hear a noise from some of the pipes inside. Have you got an outside stop tap you can turn off to try? Should be one at the property boundary.
I wondered about that. I've been outside and listened carefully but there's no sound of water at all. Just that infernal hum on the inside. :(
You'd have thought so, wouldn't you? Our LA decided we were too poor for pavements round here and laid hot-melt instead a few years ago. Every access point got buried in the stuff. The NTL cable guys had to dig to find their outlet. I suspect the external tap went the same way. :(
Could it be that the stop-tap itself, in that it won't shut off properly, is the cause of the din? Right now it's turned off, all the taps are turned on (and I remembered to turn off the heating) but water is still trickling from the kitchen tap. The hum is intermittent and reduced, but still there.
I'm thoroughly fed up with this now. I'll turn the TV on loud. ;/
I get a noise like that too, but only when water is running.
My noise varies in tone with the rate of flow of water and is lowest when the washing machine is on maximum flow, dropping to a low growel. I believe my noise is caused by the turbine type flowmeter installed in the water co stop c*ck hole in the street. The water meter is about 20 m of underground run from the stop c*ck in the kitchen.
Though your noise is unrelated to your water flow I wonder if could be due to the noise of your neigbours water meter conducted along your pipe from some combined water meter block feeding all the houses.
It's all a bit unlikley, but then your noise must be coming from somewhere. Can't say I've ever heard comment on water flow noises generated by water meters. Can they really do this?
Sounds like water hammer to me, have you checked the ballcock valve in the water tank in the attic?
Just because you haven't changed anything in your installation the water board may have increased / decreased the pressure of the incomming water to your property which can cause watter hammet o come and go without any reason (that you are aware of anyway) and can be a bitch to catch..
What is youe incomming water pressure anyway?
A way arround the problem (if it is very high pressure) is to install a pressure reducing valve on the incomming water mains and set it to something lower that tne incomming water pressure (mine is set to 3 Bar and the incomming water pressure changes from 2.5 Bar to more that 7 Bar)
By setting the pressure to something fixed you it gets much easier to find the offending valve and get it fixed...
Again sounds like either an airlock somewhere or water hammer..
If the noise is created by the meter then it's probably a airlock in the meter that causes cavitation (microscopic areas where the water boils due to very low pressure, very bad for the impeller...) but then the noise will be very much related to use, ie. more use, faster spinning impeller -> more cavitation...
Have you tried to close the stopcock in front if the meter, that will tell you if the problem is yours or comming from somwhere else, close the stop c*ck and open a couple of taps in your house (tie up the ballcock in the water tank in the attic if you have one). Is it still noisy, then it would have to come from outside your dwelling and pretty mich out of your control anymore.
In theory yes but they would have to 'spin faster' than the water they meassure to create the microscopic areas with very low pressure and subsequent boilg / explosion of the water, and since the impeller is driven by the water the impeller would be spinning slower that the water if you know whet I mean...
Weird that it *just* started to happen on Wednesday morning, all the same. And it hasn't stopped yet. I tried running all the taps/appliances at once but it didn't help. Then I took the boxing from around the stop tap to see if there was anything obvious there. No, there wasn't.
I've even turned the water off at the stop tap and run all the taps to drain everything out. Twice. And it hummed the whole time. Though I admit the stop tap doesn't quite "stop" but reduces flow to a trickle. Naturally it continued to hum when I put the water back on.
It's intermittent now, and the pitch varies for no apparent reason. It's driving me nuts. When it's loudest, I can hear it in every room. And right around the clock, too.
I seem to have pinpointed where it's worst; in a most awkward place near/at the top of the stairs, where I can't see the pipe without wrecking something.
Could it be as simple as a pipe stand-off that has fractured over time? Of course, I'd still have to *find* it. :(
Well, I don't have one (and apparently I should), and I don't *think* the other semi does. But on the *other* side of my house is a small housing association estate built in 2000. Would properties built so recently be
No, I admit I've been putting it off. Long story. I'll go up there today .
Amen brother. Why they'd do that in between C*****mas and new year beats the hell out of me. *But* I saw one of their vans outside yesterday evening, wasn't fast enough to get out and question the driver though. :(
I don't know, but it isn't brilliant and I can't say I've noticed a change.
That's one for after the holidays. My handyman won't be around any more and I have to step into his overalls, as it were. :( And first I expect I'd have to find the external stopcock, and a lot of courage. I used to love DIY but I hate doing it alone; two heads are much better than one when something turns mean. If I can avoid it, I will.
I can't find the external stopcock; it was probably buried like the NTL cable point when our LA decided to tarmac what was once pavement.
D'you think calling the water board [after the holiday] might help? What I
*don't* want is a huge bill from anyone. If it comes to that, I'll buy earplugs. ;)
"SmileyFace" wrote in news:g8xBd.75$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net:
Could it be your neighbours' stop tap that is making the noise? When we had a similar problem recently it ended up being their problem. But this was extremely hard to believe from the noise (and vibration) in our own pipework. We did turn everything off and the noise continued. Went round and found that they were suffering much worse than we were.
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