Unsolved Whining Noise

Shop deals on ebay
Support your community
Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Plumbing Forums

Help Support Plumbing Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
R

Redleg102

Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2018
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Location
Hershey, PA
I have a strange whining noise that happens sporadically in my home. At first, I thought it might be the sound of a grinding wheel working on an auto body in a garage near my house. The sound happens at all hours of the day (I work from home). It varies in volume and duration; we have not been able to determine it's location. It has no correlation to ANY activity in the home except for one - when the sound happens, the low-flow wheel on my water meter turns. I've had a reliable plumber come in twice on this, and we're baffled. It goes away when we completely shut off the house water. We have tried replacing all the internals on the three toliets and placing dye in the WCs; there's no flow there. We tried putting paper in all the sinks to see if a faucet is running, no dice. We've tried shutting off the valves to the ice maker and washing machine, no luck. The outdoor spigots are shut off. There's no sign of water accumulating anywhere, but we keep hearing this noise and wonder if it isn't indicative of a larger issue that will bite us in the future.
 
two details that I forgot. 1) we don't have a pressure-reducing valve, so that isn't what is making the noise, 2) I work in the same room as the water meter, so the meter itself isn't making the noise
 
Shut your toilets off and see if that stops your noise. If one of them are leaking through, the fill valve will come on and
refill the tank and then shut off. Leave them off for about an hour and then turn them back on one at a time and see
if one of them fills up. If it does that's the culprit. You can do the food color test also. If one is leaking through then we
can explain how to fix the problem.
 
Thanks, Tom. That was the first thing we tried; we replaced fill valves and flappers in all three toliets. Then we put dye in the WC and left them for 6+ hours. We repeatedly heard the noise, but no color transferred to the bowl.
 
I just went through this as well and for us it turned out to be the expansion tank on the hot water heater. It was out of air. I checked my plumbing PSI and filled the tank to match. Sound is gone.
 
PlumbGate said:
I just went through this as well and for us it turned out to be the expansion tank on the hot water heater. It was out of air. I checked my plumbing PSI and filled the tank to match. Sound is gone.
Click to expand...
Thanks - going to try this for the sake of completeness, but don't think this is it. The utility room with the expansion tank is on my right (thin partition between me and it) and the water meter is in my office here (in a closet). The sound is somewhere above me. Also, expansion tank is only two years old. Checked the toliets again today (emptied the WCs and shut them off); no water got into the tanks, but the sound kept happening. The baffling thing (besides what is causing the sound) is "where is the water going?"
 
Redleg102 said:
Thanks - going to try this for the sake of completeness, but don't think this is it. The utility room with the expansion tank is on my right (thin partition between me and it) and the water meter is in my office here (in a closet). The sound is somewhere above me. Also, expansion tank is only two years old. Checked the toliets again today (emptied the WCs and shut them off); no water got into the tanks, but the sound kept happening. The baffling thing (besides what is causing the sound) is "where is the water going?"
Click to expand...

Yep exactly my symptoms and also my tank is 2 years old. You couldn't really hear it even with your ear right next to it but pumping it up resolved the issue. I never knew these expansion tanks required maintenance.
 
Stick with expansion tank. But when you check it and fill it. Your best result will be to remove tank. Just unthread it. TURN WATER OFF. If you leave it under water pressure you get a false reading for air. And I dunno about these guys on here. But I have never seen one installed correctly with proper psi. So 2 years on an uncalibrated tank is a long time. Do you have instant hot water at faucets? Could be the circulation pump whining. That’s just the only thing we haven’t covered yet. Turn energy off to water heater for the day. You will still have hot water but it won’t cycle. Whining stops then proceed with expansion tank theory
 
You had mentioned the correlation to the water meters low-flow wheel turning whenever you get the sound. Do you have any idea as to the flow rate and the duration's?
 
Ooo I looked over the meter turning. Check washing machine valves and ice maker valves. So it’s running for awhile for you to have time to see meter? Or you up north with meter in building? How old is building. There might a vacuum breaker above you and water sealing out just traces pipe down to ground. Concrete or crawlspace ? Do you have a boiler for heat? At our church. The back flow preventer whines when water is on and the sounds travels to other end of building where nothing but a filler for baptsry.
 
Do you have a water softener?
It does sound like you have restricted water flow getting by something.
My water softener rattles our house when it flushes the effluent.
I haven’t heard of an on demand heat pump but I am going to go ahead and ask. By chance is your heat pump on demand?
On demand units will buck and squeal if the aren’t getting enough flow.
Are your water lines exposed? Can you grab onto them when you hear the sound?
 
I wasn't getting notification that folks posted - sorry to ignore.
We've shut off every toilet valve in the house, and tried washing machine and refrigerator as well. I put paper in every sink. There's no water under the sinks. Outside spigots are on concrete, no water showing.
No water softener.
We do have a heat pump, but the problem spans seasons (so happened in Spring, Summer and now Fall, where I have to have my heat on now)
My house is 14 years old, the meter is in the same room where I'm typing in poured concrete basement. The basement is finished so I can't get at most of the pipes.
When the meter turns, it is the low flow dial. The flow varies; it could be a 1/3 of a turn, it could be a full turn of that tiny dial. The numbers on the meter never move when it is happening
We tried the expansion tank - it is only 3 years old. It was slightly down in air, was addressed, had not impact on the problem.
Thanks to all for ideas - we are going to try changing the guts of the check valve today, but the mystery of where this low flow of water is going is still there!
 
Hi Tom - we do, but that was checked as well. Plus the humidifier doesn't run when the AC is on, and we had the problem all summer long. It really is a crazy problem!
 
You have isolated particular items my shutting them off, with no success.
You have shut the main, which did stop the noise.
Do you have any valves that control areas of the house, that you haven't tried shutting off? Just for the sake of trying to narrow it down.

Here's a theory that you won't like. If there was more than one item that had a very low flow that caused the noise to happen. Then it could be independent of season, etc.

Have you tried to make the noise happen by causing a very, very low flow? At a sink for example?
:confused::confused::confused:
 
Hi Diehard - when we finished the basement, we put in sheetrock ceilings, so I can't get at any regional valves that might exist.

We shut off all the toilets and put paper in all the sinks. still heard the noise (this was after we replaced all the toilet internal HW) I checked the outside spigots, no water under them. That eliminated everything except the washing machine and ice maker, but the noise still happened. The fridge was stubborn to pull out, so I had to wait another day, but the next day I shut off the icemaker and washing machine. Still happened.
 
Do you have any water lines going under ground anywhere. If not, could it be in the water meter itself.
 
Diehard asked a path changing question. Did you turn meter off and it still whine? Ok I looked back. If leak dial is turning the your water is finding a way thru. Get a gauge with a lazy hand. Stick on cold washer valve or spigot outside. Turn valve on observe pressure through normal times during day. The lazy hand will need to be noted too. If possible check it while whining. But sounds like your pressure regulator might be letting extra pressure build while sitting still. Just a guess but at least you can easily test
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top