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Wade Chattanooga,TN Wade Chattanooga,TN is offline
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Default Vibrating water pipes

replying to , Wade Chattanooga,TN wrote:
jneiberger wrote:

I have some sort of strange problem. I know little about plumbing, so
I have no idea what to do and I'd prefer to avoid calling a plumber. I
will if I have to, but I'd like to try to troubleshoot it myself.
Beginning sometime this summer, once in a while the pipes in my house
would vibrate for a bit. This was usually when I had the water running
outside and would then start some laundry or something like that. The
vibrating was usually short-lived and it didn't happen very often. For
some reason, the problem has gotten rapidly worse this past week. Now
the pipes start vibrating like mad anytime something is using water.
Flush the toilet, turn on the shower, start some laundry...it's awful!
The pipes are *seriously* vibrating. It sounds like someone is trying
to tunnel into my house using a jack hammer.
Here's what I know about the house. It was built in 2001, so the
plumbing is relatively new. It has a pressure arrestor of some sort
that was set before we moved in. It has an ominous warning note not to
mess with it, so I haven't.
Where should I begin looking?
Thanks!



Today my pipes started vibrating very bad when any of the three toilets
were flushed. It sounded like a air compressor was running in the
basement.At first I thought something had gone wrong with the PRV but what
I figured out is I had left the outside hose faucet on with a 50 foot hose
attached. The sprayer on the end of the hose was closed so the hose was
full of pressurized water. Once I turned the outside hose faucet off the
vibrating problem went away. The only thing I can figure out is the 50
foot hose acted as a pressurized reservoir, when the toilet was flushed
there was a pressure drop in the piping and water was feeding in from the
PRV and the hose causing the PRV to oscillate. Any other ideas as to why
this would happen?

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