Our 12 year old, 2 story house recently started having intermittent water pressure issues - the water, usually hot, pulses a steady rhythm*. This same behavior also recently started at the kitchen sink due to what I thought was air in the coiled plastic tubing going from the water line to our filter that goes to our hot water tap. Could this all be related?

*At the water heater I hear a rhythmic water 'shooshing' sound within the unit.

And for what it's worth, there was a plastic pipe running from the top of the water heater down through the garage floor that was disconnected at the top. Did I just have air getting into the system that will resolve itself now that I've reconnected this pipe?

Thanks in advance you guys!

Hi DMK


*At the water heater I hear a rhythmic water 'shooshing' sound within the unit.

To me, that indicates a problem with the HEAT TRAP NIPPLES of the water heater...could be the cold nipple or the hot nipple. Here, some of these heat trap nipples have little balls or floats in them that help to reduce the heat lost through the pipes coming off the water heater. Most likely, one of the balls has broken down or dislodged and is causing your issue. The fix here would be to remove the heat trap nipples and install new DIELECTRIC nipples. To reduce heat loss, insulate the first 10 feet of hot and cold water piping...after 10 feet, heat loss is considered, "negligible"!!

Finally, to test if the cold water heat trap nipple is the issue, you could hook up a hose to the drain on the heater and just open the drain (under pressure) and see if the pulsing starts. If there is pulsing, then the cold water nipple should be replaced and the hot nipple can probably be left alone. If there is no pulsing then I would swap out the hot water heat trap nipple (or both at that point) and see if that resolves the issue for you!

Questions? Let me know, OK?

Mark