(Looked for this in the Wiki, couldn't find it):
When we run hot water, the cold water cistern in the loft starts to refill (of course), and these days it seems noisier to me than it used to be. (It's the noise of the valve partly opening and the water squirting out gradually, I suppose.)
Before I start fiddling about, is there a standard treatment for this?
The house is 50 years old btw, though the cold water storage was replaced about 15-20 years ago.
Cheers John
Well, I had one like that and the plumber did two things. Firstly, he cleaned all the lime scale and dead spiders from the ballcock and valve assembly, then he fitted a pipe that went down the tank into the water. Now it will only make a noise if you wedge the ballcock and drain the tank, then let it completely fill, and that noise stops after it gets to the level of the pipe that goes down. I'd imagine these have a name, but I don't know what it is... I'd imagine you are right the noise is probably made worse by scale or something, or even the valve wearing. They do not seem to be exactly sophisticated. Brian
I suggest going up and having a look while the tank is refilling. There could be several reasons for the noise.
Simplest solution is turn down the flow rate. Also make sure the fill pipe is well lagged. Sometimes you can hang a bit of plastic over the tank edge so the water hits this first. Etc.
NT
Don't mess about, replace the valve. Ours is hardly audible - can't remember the make but it is a plastic one with about ten years of operation in a hard water area on its belt.
OK -- thanks Rod (and all other responders): having got all the advice I'll go up the loft and have a look at it this weekend!
Thanks to all John
Water regs have kept changing in this regard. If you find a very old ballcock, it may have a length of iron pipe on its outlet going down to near the bottom of the tank. These were banned because if the mains pressure dropped, they could syphon the water and remains of dead pigeons from your tank back into the mains. The next version was a plastic pipe with an air-break at the top to break any syphon action, but these had to jet the water past the air-break so the water didn't spurt out there, and instead entrained air into the flow and you ended up with sound of bubbles coming up through the tank. The next one was a very flimsy polythene tube, which collapses flat if you attempt to back-syphon through it, except when it gets scaled up, and then it can syphon back. It can be combined with an air-break to stop the syphoning. Fluidmaster use a rigid tube with air break (concentric with inlet for bottom feed valves) with some of their vales. Many have nothing at all anymore.
Flow rate on mine is turned down. It's set so that if I start a bath running and then forget about it, the tank runs out as the bath gets almost to the overflow, and then reduces to the slower fill rate. I don't very often run baths, and even less often remember to go back and turn the taps off in time. First time, this was a lucky accident, as I hadn't turned the inlet valve fully on after servicing the tank, but it seemed like a good idea to limit the tank inlet rate to no more than was likely to be consumed at once, allowing the tank to act as an averaging buffer.
Note that you mustn't turn the flow rate down very low, or many of the valves will not be able to generate the internal pressure needed to shut off.
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