Banging hot water cylinder / pipes, please help!

InPsyDer

I am being driven slowly mad by our hot water cylinder, which has started making worse and worse banging, thumping and chugging noises over the past 6 months.

It started off as a stand-alone VERY loud bang sound (like something heavy being dropped or a door being slammed / kicked) which would often scare the life out of me home alone late at night or very early in the morning. Frequency and annoyingness increased until I had to tell my landlady, who sent a plumber in to have a look. He said he spent “about an hour” checking over it and found nothing wrong. It just kept on going so I asked landlady to send him in again, this time I was home and gave him lots of detail about the noises. Sometimes the thudding sound goes right across from the cylinder (in hall cupboard) across roof of lounge and into kitchen, and I have seen / heard the kitchen tap vibrating. It is usually a series of gulping noises with loud bangs, loud enough to wake you bolt upright if you are asleep :- (

Plumber told me it could be water hammer, which I had already seen clips about on YouTube. He replaced a valve up the top of the tank which he said was a better size for the ballcock in our tank. He also did something with the toilet cistern, not sure what.

That was last week, and now it is so, SO MUCH WORSE! There are prolonged deep groans from the pipes in a series of 6-7 in a row in the mornings. The banging has now become much more frequent and there is a repetitive flush-flush-flush-thump, flush-flush-flush BANG noise going on whenever the water is used. The pump always made a bit of noise filling up the tank when the shower was on etc, I was used to that, but now that noise is accompanied by a very loud water rushing noise and almost a screaming noise in the pipes / cylinder. Plus all the other sound effects I have described.

To my horror when I last spoke to the landlady about all this, she told me that the plumber is out of ideas and cannot think what could possibly cause this. She said she is now pretty much at the end of what she can offer me to help! I know that she has done what she reasonably can, but the problem is soooo bad now, I am losing sleep at both ends of the night and am often unable to settle down knowing that the next bang will be along very shortly. There is no way I’d want to move out as the rest of the house is fab and I have lived there a long time. I am really hoping that people can come back to me with how similar problems were resolved in their cylinders / pipes. The name of whoever did the work (if in Dublin) would be an extra bonus so I could get them over! Dunno if it makes a difference in terms of possible causes but I am in an apartment block, on 5th / top floor. Thanks!

Cmd8363

Hi, did you ever get a solution to this because I'm having the exact same problem in my apartment? 😭

Dtp1979

Cmd8363 wrote: »

Hi, did you ever get a solution to this because I'm having the exact same problem in my apartment? 😭

Post a picture of your hotpress

InPsyDer

Cmd8363 wrote: »

Hi, did you ever get a solution to this because I'm having the exact same problem in my apartment? 😭

Good news is that I did get it sorted in the end, bad news is it went on for many, many months (and many plumbers) until we got a plumber in who actually listened carefully when the problem was explained (some had even tried to tell me it was normal!). He fitted a special valve somewhere up the top of the tank I think but I'm afraid I don't know what kind, we'd already had 2 other valves fitted by then that did nothing.

Once the water hammer issue was finally resolved though, there was a secondary issue (I assume caused by the replaced valve) of the tank making a really loud "filling" sound for aaaaages every time the water was used, splashing and gurgling away keeping me awake at night!! Cue more plumber visits and finally that was solved with some kind of new fitting and the pressure being reduced. The whole thing was a nightmare and I seriously thought about moving at times but it was worth holiding out for the peace we finally have now.

I strongly suggest taking sound recordings / videos of it when it's acting up if poss, amazing how the cylinder pipes would be quiet as the grave when the plumber called round only to kick off again after he left!

Best of luck with it, sorry I can't be more helpful but make sure you get someone in who has personally fixed water hammer issues before, it was so frustrating taking time off work to let the plumbers in only for them to not have a clue how to fix it!!!