How to Quiet Pipes With a Water Hammer Arrestor | This Old House

for the last 23 years the banging is driving us crazy in the house whether it's a sink here or the dishwasher in the kitchen or the washing machine in the basement I came just in time 23 years you betcha can I hear it sure oh yeah try it again try again sounds like it's coming from inside the wall here now we've got an access panel here Harvey let's see we got inside okay Harvey what we're looking at here is the back side of the bathtub you can see the tub right here here's the overflow for the drain here's our hot and cold piping anytime I think about water hammer I think about pipes that aren't secured properly so I shake this around the the colds not too bad that's pretty bad now what I could do is just secure this pipe and that will help the pipe right here but these pipes also go underneath the floor now is this we you always hear the noise yes all right so this access panel might be the perfect place for us to install a shock absorber right there when I say shock absorber what I mean is this it's actually called a water hammer arrestor okay we're going to cut them into the copper water lines and we'll have two of them one on the hot and one on the cold but right along a cutaway and inside you can see that there's a rubber diaphragm in the middle and on this side we have water on this side there's an air charge so when that water is moving through the pipe it's a lot of inertia in that water instead of rattling the pipes it's actually going to push that diaphragm back and forth until all the energy is dissipated nice and quiet now what I've done is I've turned off the water and drained down the system now I'm ready to cut those pipes now I like to clean the pipe before I cut it the water hammer arrestor is going to connect into this tea and the tea will solder into this hot water line so before I cut it I want to mark it right there and right there now I could cut this with a hacksaw blade but a pipe cutter makes a much cleaner cut good there's one so I'm just making the uppercut to allow for that tea to fit in there now we work on the coal side good apply flux to both the pipe and the fitting and connect it now we're ready to solve now on the threads to the water hammer arrestor have applied a little teflon tape and now we're ready to thread them into the tees use an open end adjustable tighten them up do it and now the cold okay the water hammer arrest is will take care of the banging but I really don't like this pipe moving around this much the hot so I'm gonna secure it with a clip good all right access panels in let's give it a try I'll listen right here open up full and shut off this right again what are you here just to water as it should be you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 613,572

Rating: 4.7762899 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, water hammer arrestor, Water Hammer, Home Repair, Plumbing, Plumber, noisy, noise, Do It Yourself, Richard Trethewey, plumbing pipe, plumbing 101, plumbing basics, plumbing tricks, house plumbing system, how to plumb a house

Id: _Cu9LUx79w4

Length: 4min 4sec (244 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 23 2014