Hi,

I have a water hammer (I'm guessing) problem in our house. All the pipes are under the house and it is a timber house so each time there is a water hammer noise it is extremely noisy. Basically any tap in the house is making the noise when turning on or off quickly with loud bangs. Cold water seems to be a bigger problem than hot water. I've checked and there are no loose pipes. It is a old house and I can see some air chambers sticking out from a few pipes. My plumber drained the system and installed a water hammer arrester just before the point where we think the noise was coming from (a T junction). No luck. Now it is noisier than ever. It seems like now though that the noise is clearly in another point. A point where a large pipe flows into a smaller pipe. Is this a big problem? The main pipe is larger but most of the other pipes are smaller pipes. It is not feasible to replace all of them. The plumber wasn't sure whether he can fix it or not and won't be back until he's free which could be another month.

Should I try putting another hammer at this point and see what happens? And if not I will have wasted another $60+labour without any results. I've done some googling myself and some sites suggest that you put a water hammer arrester near each faucets but that would be huge costs since you would need them on both hot and cold pipes as well.

Much appreciated for helping!

onjai

You have loose washer in one of your faucet stems. As water flows around that loose washer, it produces vibrations and eventually the noise you hear. Trace the noise to that faucet. Or go from faucet-to-faucet, close it and open it, and feel which one feels like it closes metal-on-metal. Remove that stem, replace washer. Noise should disappear.

Since the 70's all of our new construction have air chambers,( shock arresters) installed. We install these just before the hot and cold angle stops in the wall on each lavatory and the kitchen sink. How old is your house and what area do you live in? If you don't have any air chambers installed that work,( did your plumber drain the existing air chambers individually or did he simply drain the whole system?) I would build a couple of oversized air chambers out of 2" copper 14 inches long with a hard cap on the end.
I would install one on the hot pipe coming out of the heater and the other I would install on the cold water main. I have used this before in homes with water hammer complaints with good results. Good luck and ket me know if this helped. Good luck, Tom