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Any idea why running water is so loud throughout our house? it's not hammering, just a roaring *WHOOOOOOSH* that happens whenever any tap is turned at any time during the day. We have 1/2 inch copper and excellent water pressure, but goddamn, if I grab a glass of water from the kitchen in the middle of the night, I wake everyone up.
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Nov 12, 2009 22:19
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:Is your whole house run in 1/2 copper? There should be atleast 3/4 coming into the house. I'll have to check on your questions when I get home, but the worst culprits are the kitchen sink faucet and the bathroom sink. Now that I think about it, these two are back-to-back against the same wall.
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Nov 13, 2009 17:48
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I believe you're right on the water pressure. It's the highest I've experienced in any residence I've lived in. I'll have to take a measurement and reduce the pressure somehow if this is the case. Hopefully we have a regulator already installed, but I have to crawl under the house to see for sure. Thanks for your help. [Edit: I called our water co and while they couldn't tell me the PSI for my block the ones on either side are 92 and 87. Way too high.] AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Nov 13, 2009 |
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Nov 13, 2009 21:57
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Thanks for the link. I live in Pacifica, California. I think a PSI of 50 would be a bit more reasonable inside the house.
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Nov 14, 2009 01:54
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:Well if you live in california. I belelive they run off of the UPC also. So 80 psi is fine. When you get to 100+ i beleive angle stops can blow off the wall.(not saying they will for years but it can happen) I took a reading over the weekend and have 80-82 PSI at the house. I'd like to knock it down a bit if, for no other reason, than to conserve water. My wife and son are experiencing lack of hot water at the end of their lengthy 20-minute showers. The high PSI combined with a 40-gallon water heater is causing them to rethink how long they stay in the shower (not a bad thing - heh, heh). I may end up getting a shower flow restricter if it turns out we don't have a pressure regulator installed anywhere. There isn't one at the water cut-off by the house and I haven't found the meter yet -- I think it's on the neighbor's side of the fence! I still need to crawl under the house too. Back to the noise issue... I experimented a bit and the noise we hear is restricted to the kitchen faucet -- a levered one. It's really loud when in the mid-flow range. At low flow or at full open there is no noise to speak of. It's a fairly new piece of hardware.
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Nov 16, 2009 18:01
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Well, I appreciate all your advice, Rd Rash 1000cc. The previous owners of this home made some very odd decisions with regards to some very basic upgrades they went with and one of them was purchasing a 40-gallon gas water heater. For a family of four. I don't know how they managed it. They had a pretty high-end home theater set up which I think they paid for by cheaping out and so many things around the house. (Attic insulation?! Nope, we don't need it!) Thanks again for giving me some background on all this stuff. AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Nov 17, 2009 |
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Nov 17, 2009 19:49
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We bought a house 3 years ago from a family who fancied themselves DIYers and we continue to run across examples of their slap-dash, crappy work -- usually where we least expect it. We called a plumber today to fix a leaky shower and to snake out our bathroom sink. As the plumber was pulling the shower stems I told him that I half expected him to find the whole assembly held together by bubble-gum, because the previous owners har har har. In the process of snaking out out pedestal sink, the plumber discovered the pipes were literally held together by duct tape. Not duct tape around the joints. Oh no. The pipes didn't even reach each other -- there was an inch gap. They just duct-taped it all up. Our poor plumber was speechless.
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Sep 19, 2012 04:46
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I have a recurring shower valve problem the I don't know how to permanently fix. I'll try to describe this as best I can. My shower has two handles for hot and cold, and over time the hot water will not be able to be turned off completely. The problem arises from the fact that the hot water handle shuts off by turning to the left, but the stem itself (and the sleeve/ring/flange) is screwed in by tightening to the right. So...as the hot water is turned off over and over by turning it to the left, it gradually loosens the stem and/or the flange as well. If it's the stem that loosens too much, hot water pour out behind the tile because the stem has come out of it's "socket." If it's the flange that's the problem, it blocks the handle from being able to tightened enough to close the valve and water pours from the shower head. The cold side doesn't have this problem, because it's closed by turning it to the right which tightens up the whole assembly. What the hell is going on?
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Jul 14, 2017 18:23
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HycoCam posted:My safe answer would be to replace the shower valve with something more modern. But that involves getting into the wall cavity behind the tile, normally by cutting a hole in the wall behind the shower. I suppose this is the ultimate answer and will be done...eventually...but I didn't know if there was something I could do in the meantime. Sorry, but not-showering isn't an option for me.
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Jul 14, 2017 19:39
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HycoCam posted:Got pics? I know this probably isn't helpful without seeing the stem, but I'm extremely reluctant to pull it out again at this point. It's home depot / lowes crap. I think what I'll end up doing is replacing the hot stem with a valve that tightens shut to the right (like the cold one does). None of this suprises me, btw; I've posted about it before, but the prior owners were poo poo-tier DIYers who did things like bridge a 4" gap between pipes in the sink drain using nothing but duct tape. 
AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 14, 2017 |
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Jul 14, 2017 20:05
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:50 |
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While I appreciate your taking the time to post, perhaps I'm not explaining myself well: You unscrew a shower valve-stem from the wall by turning it to the left. In my shower, you turn off the hot water by turning the hot water knob to the left. When the knob is tightened closed to turn off the water, it puts pressure on the stem behind the wall and moves it left -- slightly, a tiny bit at a time. Eventually, the valve-stem unscrews enough to leak. I've taken the stem out at least a dozen times over the years. I've put plumber's tape on the threads and cranked it in there pretty tight without going overboard. I don't know if there's supposed to be some sort of locktite crap to keep it from unthreading or what, but obviously I shouldn't be able to unscrew the valve stem from the wall by using the knob under normal use.
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Jul 14, 2017 21:35
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