Perhaps the most common cause of rattling pipes in homes is something known as a “water hammer.” Every time that you turn on or shut off your faucet, the sudden change in water pressure can create a shockwave that reverberates through your pipes.
Most Common Causes of Noisy Water Pipes
The first and perhaps most common complaint from homeowners about their pipes comes in the form of “loud banging” or “banging noises”. If you hear banging coming from the pipes in your home, you might have an issue with water flow or high water pressure, which can often be fixed with a pressure reducer or pressure regulator (most modern homes already have these); professionals refer to this as a “water hammer”.
Why are My Pipes Making Loud, Banging Noises?
Have you noticed a banging noise coming from your walls when you flush a toilet or run your washing machine?
This is known as a “water hammer” and can be quite a nuisance.
Let’s look at why this happens and how you can fix it.
Why water hammer happens
To understand what causes water hammers, think about a train.
It’s chugging along at full speed and, all of a sudden, a large boulder rolls onto the track. The train crashes into the boulder, causing every train car to crash into the car in front of it—making a lot of commotion.
This is similar to what happens, on a smaller scale, inside your pipes.
When you flush your toilet, water runs through the pipes quickly. But as the toilet finishes filling up, it suddenly closes a valve, causing water the crash against it.
This creates noise and vibration, sometimes causing the pipe to bang against the wall (aka the water hammer).
How to eliminate water hammer
The fix to your water hammer problem depends on when and how your home was built.
If your home was built in or before the 1960s:
Older homes were frequently built with air chambers to prevent water hammer. An air chamber is simply a pipe connected to your pipes with a “T” fitting and capped off at the top. This capped-off pipe was filled with air.
From our train analogy, an air chamber is like a switch in the train’s track that allows the train to use an alternate track to avoid the boulder and safety come to a complete stop. The air space compresses and absorbs the shock.
However, these air chambers can eventually become completely filled with water (making them ineffective), leading to a water hammer. Because of this, air chambers have been pretty much discontinued.
Luckily, there’s a simple fix. Here is what you need to do:
- Turn off the water supply to your home.
- Drain all the water from your home’s pipes — open all the faucets, flush all the toilets, and run the washing machine and dishwasher.
- Turn the water back on.
OR
- Is air pockets the problem? Another issue that can cause a similar banging sound is actually air pockets in your pipes. …
- Close valves halfway. …
- Replace intake connections. …
- Install water hammer arresters. …
- Secure the pipe. …
- Install pressure limiting valve. …
- Install different taps. …
- Call the plumber.
If your home was built between the 1970s and 1990s:
Homes built from the 70s through the 90s typically have little to no water hammer protection. So if you are noticing loud, knocking noises from your pipes, you will likely need to contact a professional plumber to have water hammer arrestors installed.
See below for more info on water hammer arrestors.
If your home was built since the 1990s:
Modern homes are built with water hammer arrestors.
These are small devices that are connected to your water pipes and contain a spring-loaded shock absorber. This spring absorber diverts the force of the water when a faucet is shut off, greatly reducing water hammer.
And unlike the air chambers of old, these devices never become water logged.
So if your home is newer, and you’re experiencing water hammer, one or more of your water hammer arrestors may have malfunctioned (although this is rare), or there were no water hammer arrestors ever installed.
Other problems that can cause loud, banging pipes
Sometimes the banging noise isn’t a water hammer. If you have functioning air chambers or water hammer arrestors, you might have a different problem:
- The straps that connect your plumbing to your home’s wall studs could be loose, causing the pipes to vibrate. (This can actually be caused by a water hammer.)
- High water pressure. Your home may need a pressure reducer valve installed to quiet the pipes.
Still, need help with your noisy pipes? Pippin Brothers is your Fort Sills, Duncan, and Lawton area plumbing expert fixing everything from installation, repair, and maintenance of every component of your plumbing system. Call us today at 580-215-5433.
Why Are My Water Pipes Shaking and Rattling?
Air can actually get stopped up in pipes as a result of water line problems. If the banging in your pipes happens because of trapped air, then these sounds usually start immediately as a faucet is turned on, though you might hear a bubbling noise, too, as the air moves up and out.
While most piping lives behind the walls, floors, or ceilings of your home, some have to be hung with fasteners. If one of these slips, gets loose, or comes off completely, then the pipe can start moving or swaying as water runs through it.
Copper pipes in particular often expand as warm water travels across their metal surface, especially if the temperature on the hot water heater is too high.
Copper pipes carrying hot water can enlarge, but when they ultimately reduce in size again, this makes them scrape against a house’s joists, studs, or support brackets in the walls, resulting in loud noises.
If this happens, you’ll probably hear something that sounds like shaking or rattling going on in your walls. This is just the result of a slightly loose pipe, so it can be fixed rather easily, but it should be attended to quickly so the problem doesn’t get worse.
When you hear shaking and rattling in the ceiling or under the floorboards, don’t hesitate to call a trusted plumbing professional to take care of that noise before it gets unbearable.
Why Does My Plumbing Make a Humming Noise?
If the water pressure in your home gets too high for your house’s plumbing system capacity, your pipes can literally start to vibrate, much like a car traveling very fast down an open highway. If the water is running, you might start to hear a hum coming from your pipes.
While this might happen in a home of any type or size, if your home draws on well water, you’re at a higher risk for vibrating pipes. If this happens, do a quick check on your water tank, as you’ll usually want it set at no more than 55 PSI (pound-force per square inch).
In the event that you don’t have direct access to reading a water pressure meter on your tank, call a professional plumber to come and take a look. They can alter the system appropriately to get rid of that pesky hum.
Where Does That High-Pitched Whining Noise Come From?
Every house has a complete piping system of valves and other elements that depends on lots of tiny pieces and parts to enable the whole thing to work as it’s supposed to. Like any other piece of hardware, washers, nuts, and bolts (and much else) can become loose or wear out over time, resulting in a high-pitched whining noise.
This whistling sort of sound is most typically the simple product of a worn-down piece of hardware near a dishwasher, washing machine, or dryer.
These specific areas are more susceptible to loose washers or other hardware because those appliances cause a significant amount of movement and can ultimately wear down nuts and bolts in that particular part of the piping.
If this happens to occur in your home, just have a plumber come in to tighten or replace the necessary hardware, and that should fix it up in no time.
Why Do Drains Make Gurgling or “Glugging” Sounds?
Sometimes, plumbing systems begin to run into problems when attempting to drain out excess water or waste. When this happens, you might hear something that sounds like a giant that lives in your walls chugging an enormous bottle of Coca-Cola: glug-glug-glug-glug-glug.
This gurgling or glugging noise can be an indication of a clogged passage in the piping itself. This could be an actual piece of plastic or other objects that’s fallen down the drain or something as simple as soap or dirt buildup in the pipes.
Plumbers have the ability to quickly and easily clean out debris or nasty scum buildup, which in turn gets that giant to stop making glugging noises all the time.
FAQ
If you hear clunking, rattling, or vibrating from your pipes, it could simply be that your pipes aren’t fitted correctly. It could be the case that they never were fitted properly, or they’ve come loose over time. Either way, they need to be fixed.
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