Hello everyone. I'm hearing a clicking or knocking noise coming from the water heater. After you flush a toilet and the tank refills or when you quickly turn a faucet to full-on and then full-off, a clicking sound comes from the water heater. It's usually 3 clicks. One really loud, then slightly loud and then sort of quiet. This sound came about within the past year or two and actually sounds a little worse now (or maybe I'm just getting obsessed with it).
I originally thought this was a simple water hammer issue so I installed 4 water hammer arrestors. One by the kitchen sink on one side of the house. One by the 2 toilets on the other side of the house. When those 2 didn't seem to cure anything, I installed "ball c*ck" water hammer arrestors right at each toilet. Still nothing.
The water heater is a Richmond model, is about 8 years old and is a gas model. I've strapped down ALL of the plumbing in the basement so that all pipes are tight. Nothing is rattling. If I turn the spigot off at the water heater and flush the toilet, the noise goes away. But with the spigot open, the sound is there.
I spoke to a plumber over the phone and he said they could remove the check valve on the water heater to cure it. I guess that when water is shut off, this check valve was knocking on the inside of the water heater (??). But when the plumber showed up to fix it, he mentioned that the water heater didn't have any dielectric nipples so he couldn't do anything to it. He did test my water pressure and it is 69 psi which he said wasn't all that bad.
Is there anything else I can do to cure this? My wife tends to go to the bathroom a lot during the night and flushes every time. This knocking ALWAYS wakes me up. I'd like to avoid either waiting for the water heater to die or shelling out the bucks to buy a new one just to get rid of this noise. HELP!
Thank you in advance!!
Joe
-------------------------------------
##-----------------------------------------------## Delivered via