No, not a newly-discovered blues singer from the deep south, but our house.

We suffer from extremely complainy pipes – at the moment it sounds like there’s a blue whale stuffed in the airing cupboard.

It’s the cold water – every time a toilet is flushed or tap run, the whole house reverberates to a mournful wail. The only way to alleviate it is to run another tap elsewhere.

I had this in another house and drained everything down and refilled, opening outlets from the bottom up, which cured it. Did this a while back and it seemed to work, but recently I’ve done it a few more times and the howl comes back with a vengeance. I’ve even done it in reverse just to see if it made any difference (i.e.) closed from top down. It hasn’t.

I’m not sure where air could be getting into the system – a possible culprit is a dodgy outside tap (the howling only really started after we opened the valve to the outside tap for spring) but not sure how air could travel back *down* the pipe into the rest of the system.

Does anyone have any suggestions or other ideas to cure the howling? It’s becoming embarrassing to explain to colleagues on video calls that no, that isn’t a werewolf in the background, just our plumbing!

I’ve had some success in the past by tweaking the flow rate to things (e.g. toilet) that cause the howling to commence. That only works, of course, if there’s an isolation valve in front of that thing.

I have a feeling that the root cause of our howling was actually a toilet siphon on its way out, so that might be worth looking at.

Water hammer. If it happens when the lavatory cistern is refilling it’s the valve vibrating open and closed causing a wave in the pipework which, as trumpeters will know, produces a sound. Old fashioned valves have an adjusting screw against the ball float, fiddling with that should cure it. Don’t know if more modern valves like my house hasn’t got have the same adjustment.

Or, could be loose or missing pipe clips allowing the pipework to vibrate.

slowoldman
Subscriber

Water hammer. If it happens when the lavatory cistern is refilling it’s the valve vibrating open and closed causing a wave in the pipework which, as trumpeters will know, produces a sound. Old fashioned valves have an adjusting screw against the ball float, fiddling with that should cure it. Don’t know if more modern valves like my house hasn’t got have the same adjustment.

Or, could be loose or missing pipe clips allowing the pipework to vibrate.

Posted 3 minutes ago

Thanks – problem is it’s not isolated to one particular tap or toilet, but happens to them all.

I had a kitchen mixer tap which would drip and pipes would howl if someone used a tap elsewhere in the house.
Mixer replaced, problem solved.

Part 2 ball valve washer or as above kitchen sink mixer. Ball valve washers cheapest and easiest, start there.

restricting the flow to taps and cistern helped get rid of our water hammer. The mains pressure varies depending on time of day/ year, so it comes & goes.

Happening on every tap means Either a) you have a water cistern in the loft which supplies everything and it’s the fill valve on this. Or b) somewhere a ceramic tap valve has failed and vibrates. The valve will cause the vibration regardless of which tap in the system is opened.