My team at Rocketman Plumbing specializes in fast repairs done right. We handle plumbing, heating and cooling to keep your home or business running comfortably. Today, let’s talk a little bit about what your ears can tell you about your plumbing systems in your house. There are a few noises you don’t want to hear, and if you hear these noises, you don’t want to ignore them.
A “Glug Glug Glurp” Sound
One troubling sound happens when you’re running your bathtub, your kitchen sink, or flushing your toilets, and you hear this “glug glug glurp.” It sounds abnormal. If you flush your toilet and you get air bubbles coming back up out of it and hear that kind of sound, it’s a sign that your sewer line is backing up.
The Sound of Running Water
Another is the sound of running water when you know you don’t have any water on. That’s a sign that you could have a water leak. Water noise can vibrate throughout an entire house. You can have a leak out in your yard, and you can hear it inside your house. So you want to listen to that water-running noise. Sometimes it’s just a toilet that is running, which is an easy fix. But if you have a slab foundation, which almost all new homes built in the last 30+ years have slab foundation, you could have a slab leak that needs to be handled.
Rattling or Clanging Pipes
The last noise is one that we’ve probably all heard a time or two, and that is the pounding of a pipe, possibly in a wall. It just goes, “bam, bam, bam!” And usually it will stop eventually before picking back up again later. This can be caused by several things, but it’s commonly caused by a loose pipe in your wall. The clanging sound usually starts when you turn a faucet on or off. That changes the water pressure in your water line and can result in that rattling or clanging sound.
You might also hear clanging noises from a toilet. When you flush your toilet, it runs water. When the fill valve is just about to shut off, it squeezes the water pressure almost off. If you have a plumbing issue, this is when you’ll hear that banging or rattling sound from a pipe in the wall near your toilet.
How to Fix Noisy Pipes
There are several things you can do to solve the problem of noisy pipes:
Install a Shock Absorber on Your Water Line
You can install a shock absorber on your water line to quiet down the clanging sounds. Usually, you do it right off of the hot water heater, but sometimes you can do it underneath a sink, too. Lots of times, that will solve the noise problem.
Lower Your Water Pressure
Sometimes, your water pressure might simply be too high in your house, and you might need to put in a pressure-reducing valve. Your water pressure shouldn’t be over about 60-65 pounds. If your pressure is too high, you’re much more likely to have mainline water breaks. Installing a pressure reducing valve will help lower that risk and prevent the plumbing noises.
Replace the Fill Valve on Your Toilet
If the noise happens when you flush the toilet, what you can do to fix it is replace the fill valve on your toilet. You can also turn the shutoff valve that supplies water to your toilet to reduce the amount of water going into the tank. This lowers the water pressure and can help prevent that noise from happening.
Call Rocketman for Expert Plumbing in Albuquerque
If you’ve tried these solutions and you’re still hearing plumbing noises, give Rocketman Plumbing a call at 505-375-6602. We’ll come take a look at your plumbing and fixtures to see what the problem is and get it handled for you.