About speedball1 Expertise About me: My Plumbing Expertise: I retired from plumbing after a lifetime in the trade. all phases from service and upkeep to construction, both residential and commercial. I am qualified to do anything in plumbing from fixing a leaky faucet to drafting a set of plans for a commercial shopping center and supervising the construction. My last five years were spent as a trouble shooter for a large plumbing company. I took on all my companys complaints. I have been a expert on the plumbing page at Askme.com. In a field of 200 experts my rating was number one. You may also find me at Answerway.com and AskMe Help Desk.com. This is fun for me and if I can help anybody out that`s iceing on the cake. Degrees & Certifications: As for degrees, I don`t have any. Just a Journeymans ticket, but hey! How about fifty years experience?
Experience Life Experience? Hmmmmmmm! Ran away at 15 and joined a carnival, Navy at 17 Merchant marine at 19 I've had a hellava life.
Question I have a noise problem with my house plumbing that began suddenly about a month ago. No changes have been made prior to the noise started for three years when a water heater and expanxion tank were installed.
The howl can be induced from any tap, hot or cold water.
Turning off all valves feeding faucets and then opening them one at a time, in sequence, still produces howl. That is, everything off except say one toilet produces howl. Then that toilet valve is closed and another tried, producing howl. Similarly for faucets tried one at a time.
Pressure regulator valve has been changed. Master house shutoff valve has been changed.
When the water heater inlet valve is turned off, the howl stops.
Subsitute expansion tank tried, to no avail.
Heat trap nipples in waterheater inlet/outlet changed. No avail.
Shut off valve to water heater replaced. No avail.
Changing pressure in house with PRV changes frequency of howl and flow rate required to cause it.
With pressure set low, howl can be stopped, but pressure is marginal in house.
Frequently, the howl, when induced by turning on a faucet, will fade out after a some seconds without changing the flow rate thru the faucet.
At certain pressures, the howl won't occur while water is running, but when a faucet or toilet valve) closes, a groaning sound occurs that slowly dies out. This concurs with the pressure rise seen on a pressure gauge as the pressure rises to "set" value.
This problem has our local plumbers stumped. And as you can see from above, all the "fixes" installed haven't worked.
Any ideas, please?
Answer Good morning Keith, Try this. Shut the water off at the shutoffs located under the tank to every toilet in your house and then try to make the pipes howl while keeping those valves closed. What you are experiencing is called "sympathetic vibration". When somthing in the system vibrates and the pipes pick it up and carries it throughout the entire house. Let me know how you make out and if you still have the noise I'll walk you through the process of elimation. This isn't the first time I've been faced with this problem. Every "mystery" has a simple explanation once you start to examine it. Hope this helps and thank you for rating my reply. I'll wait on your response. Cheers, Tom
