running water noise - any bright ideas

warehouse

Here's a longshot, but some freezers can sound like this. Turn it off for a couple of minutes to let the gasses and stuff settle down and see if you can still hear it. At the worst you've removed it from the equation.

caleyles

If you have a burst pipe on the incoming water main the most common point to hear it is at the incoming stopcock as you can hear the water movement through it - the other possibility is a leak in the pipework under the floor. If you turn off the sd valve and leave it off for a few minutes do you still hear water running - if so the likeliest cause is the main outside - possibly copper or lead as it is extremely unusual for alkathene to split unless it is not buried deep enough and a joint has come apart with the frost - again unlikely as you would have noticed quite a large pressure c drop in the pressure inside

HTH

pramsay13

Thanks all, the freezer is at the other side of the room, so not that unfortunately.
I fiddled with main stopcock, which seems to have made the sound far quieter???
It now sounds extremely quiet, almost to the point that I'm not sure if it's water I can hear or my own ear fluid or even a quiet motor running?
If I just came into the room now I probably wouldn't notice anything amiss it's only as I listen extremely closely that I hear anything, and even then I'm not sure.
Hmmmm

blckbrd

OP hopefully it's nothing to worry about but if you begin to develop the urge to line the room with kichen foil...

Wookey

Turn the stopcock back to where it was when you heard the noise, turn of the outside stopcock and open up your mains water tap inside until no water comes out of it, if the noise can no longer be heard then there is a leak/burst on the incoming supply.

pramsay13

Wookey wrote: »

Turn the stopcock back to where it was when you heard the noise, turn of the outside stopcock and open up your mains water tap inside until no water comes out of it, if the noise can no longer be heard then there is a leak/burst on the incoming supply.

Thanks Wookey, if I turn the main stopcock to the point where there is a lot of noise, it is nearly shut. This doesn't stop the supply totally though . When I completely shut the stopcock there is no noise at all. There seems to be slight leak somewhere as there are water drops on some of the pipework, but it is not dripping or anything.

Wookey

If there is cold water running constantly thru the piping then it will tend to condensate, dry it of and carefully check along it and round any joints to ensure that it is still watertight.

babyblooz

We had this many years ago. Ours is an old house,(1930's) and the houses were built on a loop system with the pipework serving two houses. Ours had been seperated from the loop by the previous owner to us, so we weren't on the same system anymore but we got the noise of the next door neighbours broken pipework under the yard down to the outside toilet, echoing along the blanked-off section of pipe. It was the weirdest thing you've ever heard. Sounded like the cistern was constantly filling up. We couldnt get to sleep for it.

exprog

babyblooz wrote: »

Sounded like the cistern was constantly filling up.

Talking of which, the OP could lift the top off the cistern of his own toilet just to check whether the water is going into there. Happened in my parents house once.

pramsay13

Thanks everyone, I got a phone call yesterday from the owner of the flat next door (flat is currently empty) to say there was water skooshing out of a pipe in his bathroom. Apparently the system was originally part of the same setup, so that's why I could hear it from our kitchen.
Problem solved:T